Pro-Trump YouTube duo Diamond & Silk appeared Thursday on Capitol Hill to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. It didn’t take them long to make false statements.
The flamboyant duo—whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson—became a cause célèbre among conservative lawmakers at this month’s Facebook hearings. Allegations that they were censored by the social-media site received more attention than serious, global issues—among them, genocide—related to the site.
After repeated grilling from Republican lawmakers on the alleged blocking of Diamond & Silk content, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for “an enforcement error” and said the website had reached out to the duo to resolve the situation. The pro-Trump pair claimed they never heard from Facebook, but email and social-media evidence emerged proving them wrong.
ADVERTISEMENT
On Thursday, the duo themselves came before Congress for a separate hearing. And moments after swearing an oath, they repeated the false censorship claim, replying in the affirmative when asked if their content was “blocked” by Facebook.
"Facebook censored our free speech!" Diamond shouted, before alleging that President Trump is the biggest victim of alleged social-media censorship.
Then the duo proceeded to make even more blatantly false statements.
Diamond claimed that she and Silk have “never been paid by the Trump campaign.” But Federal Election Commission documents show exactly the opposite. In November 2016, the pair were given $1,274.94 for, what was recorded as, “field consulting.”
When confronted with those receipts by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the duo snarled back: “We are familiar with that particular lie. We can see that you do fall for fake news.”
Jeffries reminded the pair that they were under oath, and asked, “Who is lying here?”
The pair claimed in separate moments that either the FEC made a mistake in its documentation, or that the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, may have reimbursed them for air travel to stump for Trump. At one point, Diamond accused Jeffries, who is also black, of racial motivations for interrogating them over the campaign funds.
Members of the committee were seen holding back laughter as Diamond & Silk engaged in shouting matches with multiple Democratic lawmakers.
“This is a stupid and ridiculous hearing," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) eventually declared.
