Meta CEO founder Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that members of President Biden's administration yelled at his employees, demanding they take down content on their behalf.

Meta announced Tuesday that it would be ending its controversial fact-checking practices and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have "gone too far." Zuckerberg spoke about the platform's struggles to maintain freedom of expression while fending off pressure from the Biden administration amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"During the Biden administration, when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program," the social media CEO said, "while they were trying to push that program they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly, were true. They basically pushed us and said, you know, that ‘anything saying that says vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.’ And I was just like ‘We’re not going to do that, we’re clearly not going to do that, I mean that is kind of inarguably true."

FACEBOOK ADMITS 'MISTAKE' IN CENSORING ICONIC TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT PHOTO: 'THIS WAS AN ERROR'

"Who is they?" Rogan asked. "Who was telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?"

"It was people in the Biden administration," the Meta CEO said.

He then spoke further about the "government censorship," much of which he says has been covered by the congressional investigation, where he said, "I mean basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse, and it's like… these documents are, it's all kind of out there."

Zuckerberg summarized that the conflict between his company and the government "basically got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we're not going to, we're not going to take down things that are true.' That's ridiculous."

FACEBOOK HAS ‘INTERFERED’ WITH US ELECTIONS 39 TIMES SINCE 2008: STUDY

Rogan later asked about the response after the investigation, "was anybody held accountable? Was there any, I mean any repercussions?"

"I mean they lost the election," Zuckerberg joked.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led Republicans to their first House majority in four decades in 1994, said Saturday the House Freedom Caucus should recall how his own caucus led conservatives to power within the party.

Gingrich tweeted that he and other conservatives had developed "positive action principles" in 1983 as part of what they called the Conservative Opportunity Society.

"[Those] led 11 years later to the Contract with America and the first GOP House Majority in 40 years."

"If the Freedom Caucus would study them, they could be dramatically more effective," Gingrich said, going on to cite and agree with a sentiment from political reporter Mark Halperin’s "Wide World of News" newsletter.

"[T]he Freedom Caucus is a bunch of rebels with a series of causes but no coherent path to achieving said causes," Halperin wrote.

In the 1980s, although Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Boston Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill wielded strong control of the House. O’Neill and Reagan had a notably friendly but ideologically disparate relationship.

Coinciding with the early days of C-SPAN televising live floor proceedings, Gingrich would often take to the well of the House in the late-night hours and address conservatives’ issues to a mostly empty chamber but with a captive audience on the new TV format.

GINGRICH BLASTS HARRIS' ‘RAMBLING’ SPEECHES

Gingrich biographer Craig Shirley told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the Freedom Caucus should study the work of their comparative predecessor, the Conservative Opportunity Society, as well as the path Gingrich led from a low-profile congressman to speaker.

"I guess the word brilliant is thrown around so, so cavalierly. So let me just say, it was extremely smart politics to make the case for conservative governance," Shirley said of Gingrich’s work in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Reagan had already blazed that path eight years before Gingrich did."

While critics say the GOP has shifted hard to the right on some issues and softened on others, Shirley said it’s essentially the same as it was during Gingrich’s rise.

"Less government, more freedom, less taxes, strong national defense, pro-life."

Former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn., another top member of Gingrich’s conservative group, said in a PBS interview that there have not been too many groups like the Conservative Opportunity Society (or the Freedom Caucus, which hadn’t been formed at the time of the interview) and that there was the same issue with apprehension over angering their party leaders.

Weber said there had been a few small intra-caucus conservative groups prior to the Reagan era, including one in the 1960s led by then-Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill. – who would go on to serve as Pentagon chief two times.

On the last day of the 1982 session, Gingrich approached Weber and asked, "What are you doing next year and for the next 10 years after that?." 

"I thought that was interesting and I said, ‘I expect to be back here, but nothing special other than that,’" Weber recalled. 

"What he was saying was that he, as one person, was not being effective…. He identified me in the [GOP] conference as somebody [who] had been supportive of his point of view and maybe had some ability to organize things," Weber said.

MIKE JOHNSON RE-ELECTED HOUSE SPEAKER

Shirley said the current Freedom Caucus has the rare opportunity to achieve their goals if they play their cards right, with full Republican control of Washington.

"They don't have a ‘contract,’ but they have the next best thing there. They have a core set of issues and an ideology that they can easily follow," he said, adding that "no one should ever doubt" Speaker Mike Johnson’s commitment to "Reaganite" principles.

In additional comments to Fox News’ "Hannity," Gingrich said the one-round vote Friday was a "great victory" for Johnson, R-La.

"[He’s] just a decent, hardworking, intelligent human being.… I could not have been the kind of speaker he is. I don't have the patience. I don't have that ability to just keep moving forward. It's really very extraordinary."

Meanwhile, Freedom Caucus member Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News the group met with Johnson earlier and that he "just didn't come away with the feeling that the ‘umph’ or the willingness to fight for Trump's agenda was there."

"And I use as a backdrop what’s happened the last 14 months, we had 1500-page omni-bills that you couldn’t read – where you had no spending cuts to offset $100 billion in new spending."

"And I know we had a slim majority, but that's over with now. What we wanted to impress with [Johnson] yesterday was, are you going to fight for these things that we've been asking for, like a balanced budget? Like offsets? Like getting behind all of the Trump agenda?"

Norman, along with Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, initially did not vote for Johnson, which would have set up a second round of speaker votes.

But, Norman told "The Story" that that action was the "only way to let my voice be heard."

He said Johnson "gave his word" to fight for the things he mentioned to Fox News, and that agreement, plus a message from Trump that Johnson was the only speaker candidate with support in the caucus, guided his decision to ultimately support the Louisianan.

In a "Dear Colleague" letter released Friday, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., and his members expressed several policy points that Johnson should commit to in order to "reverse the damage of the Biden-Harris administration," as well as achieve long-standing conservative goals.

The letter indicated they had voted for Johnson because of their "steadfast support" of Trump and ensuring the Jan. 6 elector certification can run smoothly.

"We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the Speaker’s track record over the past 15 months."

The caucus called for Johnson to modify the House calendar so its schedule is as busy as the Senate’s, ensure reconciliation legislation reduces spending and deficits in "real terms," and halt violations of the "72-hour-rule" for debate on amendments to bills.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

They also demanded Johnson not rely on Democrats to pass legislation that a majority of his own caucus won’t support.

In comments on "The Story," Norman said he believes Johnson now understands – through the initial silence of several Republicans during the first roll call and his and Self’s initial non-Johnson-vote – that he will have to work to consider the conservative bloc’s demands.

Members of the U.S. intelligence community who believed that the coronavirus may have originated from a lab leak in China were blocked from sharing their opinions and research with the broader intel community, according to sources inside the FBI and other government officials familiar with the Biden administration's internal efforts during the pandemic.

In the first few months after COVID arrived in the U.S., the prevailing view within the Biden administration was that COVID-19 most likely originated organically in Wuhan, China, and was transferred to humans from infected animals. They said this was potentially due to the country's under-regulated and extensive wildlife trade. This viewpoint was opposed by a much smaller group within the intel community, who believed a purposeful or accidental lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the likely cause of the outbreak. 

Now, it has come to light in a new Wall Street Journal report that some of those officials who believed in the likelihood of a COVID-19 lab-leak theory were reportedly blocked by the Biden administration from sharing their viewpoints with the president and other intelligence community leaders.

Early in Joe Biden's presidency, he tasked the U.S. intelligence community with preparing a report on their most updated analysis on the origins of the coronavirus. The report came amid China's blocking of U.S. officials' access to the Wuhan Institute, preventing them from adequately studying the virus' origins.

COVID ‘MOST LIKELY’ LEAKED FROM WUHAN LAB, SOCIAL DISTANCING ‘NOT BASED ON SCIENCE,’ SELECT COMMITTEE FINDS

At the time, the FBI was the only government agency concluding that a lab leak origin theory was most likely. 

Yet, according to FBI senior scientist Jason Bannan, who was tasked with helping lead the agency's investigation into COVID-19's origins, neither he nor any of his agency counterparts were invited to share their assessment during an August 2021 briefing with the president, led by the White House's National Intelligence Council, that sought to share the intel community's position on natural versus artificial origins of COVID-19.

"Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing," Bannan told the Wall Street Journal. "I find it surprising that the White House didn’t ask."

Additionally, according to sources familiar with the matter, three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a sub-agency within the Department of Defense's Defense Intelligence Agency, were also blocked from sharing their research that concluded the coronavirus originated from a lab leak. Ultimately, a Defense Intelligence Agency Inspector General report was commissioned to find out whether the three scientists' assessment was suppressed.

A spokesperson for the ODNI declined to comment on the report, which has yet to be released. 

FAUCI DENIES SEEKING TO SUPPRESS COVID-19 LAB LEAK ORIGIN THEORY

The three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien, argued that evidence they found had shown that Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were conducting dangerous "gain-of-function" research. In turn, the trio informed their counterparts, including someone at the FBI on Bannan's team, about their findings. However, in July 2021, the three scientists were told by their superiors to halt any continued sharing of their work with people at the FBI, which they were told was "off the reservation," the Wall Street Journal reported.

In response to the assertions made in the Wall Street Journal's report, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence community-wide assessment of the origins of COVID-19 included input "from across the community on the two main hypotheses of the origins of the pandemic in line with all of the Intelligence Community’s analytic standards, including objectivity." 

The spokesperson added that efforts were made to ensure that both of these viewpoints were included in the intelligence assessment, in line with the "standard process" for typical coordination of a National Intelligence Council assessment.