More than 50 Biden officials at 12 federal government agencies have been exposed for colluding with Big Tech to censor their political opponents in a major lawsuit filed by state attorneys general.
Attorneys general for the states of Missouri and Louisiana have amended a blockbuster lawsuit filed in May that reveals the extent to which the Biden White House, State Department, FBI and major social media companies colluded to infringe upon citizens’ rights to freedom of expression. The right to participate fully in political debate is a fundamental pillar of the American constitutional system of government.
The lawsuit documents show the government‘s intent to infringe on Americans’ First Amendment rights and limit their ability to discuss US health policy and election issues via social media.
In the lawsuit, the state’s AGs compel the Justice Department to hand over communications the Biden administration had with Big Tech companies that relate to issues such as health policy and election interference.
“Yesterday, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a joint discovery dispute statement asking the Louisiana District Court to compel the Department of Justice to turn over communications between senior Biden administration officials from the White House, State Department, FBI and others and major social media companies,” a joint statement noted Thursday. Justice has already turned over communications between a number of federal officials and social media companies, but declined to provide communications between senior officials and social media companies.”
The lawsuit would focus on the widespread and coordinated “censorship enterprise” to rig the US election. This follows revelations that Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been approached by the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden story.
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“The communications already provided by the Department of Justice to the complaining states show, as the joint statement points out, a vast ‘censorship enterprise’ across a multitude of federal agencies. In response to Missouri and Louisiana interrogations, defendants identified 45 federal officials from DHS, CISA, CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General (all contained within DHS or HHS) who communicate with the platforms of social media about ‘disinformation and censorship,’ note the AGs.
“Meta, for example, disclosed that at least 32 federal officials, including senior officials from the FDA, the United States Election Assistance Commission, and the White House, have communicated with Meta about moderation. content on its platforms, many of which have not been disclosed in response to plaintiffs’ inquiries to defendants,” the statement added. “YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including Bureau officials from the census and the White House, many of which were also not disclosed by the defendants.”
The joint statement from the attorneys general then names the agencies targeted by the lawsuit for more transparency about their unconstitutional activities.
“The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this censorship enterprise is extremely broad, including officials from the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and of course other agencies, such as the Census Bureau, FDA, FBI, State Department, Treasury Department, and United States Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the US government, including many White House officials. The defendants objected to the production of some of the most relevant and probative information in their possession,” the AGs add.
In addition to the examples cited in the joint statement, the Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Twitter provided many disturbing examples of the US government’s campaign of censorship, as follows:
A senior FB official emailed the Surgeon General saying, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects of us on misinformation going forward. ” This chain of emails follows the SG’s ‘disinformation health advisory’ in July 2021.
The same senior official later emailed HHS and noted, “Thank you again for taking the time to meet with us earlier today.” Then the official went on to discuss how Facebook is taking even more steps to censor free speech (ago.mo.gov/docs/default-s…)
Other communications show Facebook “increasing the strength of our downgrades for COVID and vaccine-related content that third-party fact checkers rate as ‘partially false’ or ‘missing context.’
This content will now be downgraded with the same force as we downgrade any content on our platform rated “False”.
Twitter has scheduled a meeting to debrief senior White House officials on “vaccine misinformation.”
There are several instances where Facebook would not proceed with free speech censorship on its platform until it receives notice, or a “debunking” from the CDC. Twitter followed the same course in at least one email.
The CDC also offered a monthly debunking meeting with Facebook to help them censor free speech as well as regular “Be on the Lookout” calls with major social media outlets.
A White House official was even concerned about Fauci’s parody accounts and coordinated with Facebook to remove them.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) contacted Twitter, Google, Meta and Microsoft following the botched deployment of the DHS Disinformation Governance Board:
The Assistant Secretary to the Treasury has sought to connect with social media platforms and influence social media operations.
Big Tech employees may have thought they were giving themselves a “cover” to censor and delete users. But what they really did was document a chain of evidence proving that the Biden administration violated Americans’ First Amendment rights.
OPINION: This article contains comments that reflect the opinion of the author.
