As described in the article, all that happened were subpoenas for documents. That's the very first step in any investigation. Those documents have shed significant light on the relationship between the SIO and government agencies [0]:

> Led by former CIA fellow Renee DiResta, the Virality Project functioned as an intermediary for government censorship. Ties between the US government and the academic research center were extremely close. DHS had “fellows” embedded at the Stanford Internet Observatory, while SIO had interns embedded at CISA, and former DHS staff contributed to the Virality Project’s final report.

> The Virality Project also had contact with the White House and the Office of the Surgeon General, described the CDC as a “partner” in its design documents, and the California Department of Public Health had a login to access the Jira content flagging system, as did CISA personnel.

It sure seems like SIO was acting as a government contractor/agent here, if it was providing services to the government in exchange for funding.

[0] - https://brownstone.org/articles/the-virality-projects-censor...