Some good news, with a US federal court granted a request by Missouri and Louisiana officials for information and documents in the Biden administration over its alleged collusion with social media giants in an effort to censor and suppress free speech. This will be interesting, since who knows what dirt will be revealed. It will furnish material that will hopefully lead to a thousand beautiful law suits. Let it bloom!
“A federal court has granted a request by Missouri and Louisiana officials to obtain information and documents from top-ranking officials in the Biden administration over its alleged collusion with social media giants in an effort to censor and suppress free speech.
Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, announced on social media on July 13 that Terry Doughty, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, had ruled in favor of the request for the discovery process.
The ruling paves the way for the attorneys general to collect documents from top-ranking Biden administration officials and social media giants.
In court documents (pdf) shared by Schmitt, Doughty wrote that there is “good cause” for an expedited preliminary injunction discovery.
The judge, a Trump appointee, also gave a timeline in which federal officials and social media platforms must hand over documents.
Plaintiff states may serve document and information requests from government officials and third party subpoenas on up to five major social media platforms seeking to identify which federal officials have allegedly been in communication with them within five business days after the ruling.
The ruling was issued on July 12.
Federal officials and social media platforms must also hand over documents and answer questions from officials from the two states within the next 30 days, the judge ruled.
‘Suppressed Disfavored Speakers’
The ruling comes after the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri filed a lawsuit in May alleging that the Biden administration “colluded with and/or coerced social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling the content ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’”
The attorneys general named social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube in a press release announcing the lawsuit in May.
They also claimed that President Joe Biden himself, along with other top-ranking government officials, had worked with the platforms to censor and suppress free speech, including “truthful information” pertaining to the origins of COVID-19, the effectiveness of masks, election integrity, and the security of voting by mail, as well as the ongoing Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are Biden, former press secretary Jen Psaki, chief medical adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Disinformation Governance Board executive director Nina Jankowicz, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and others.
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that the officials “pressured and colluded with social media giants Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor free speech in the name of combating so-called ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation,’ which led to the suppression and censorship of truthful information on several topics, including COVID-19.”
The complaint also alleges that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board was created “to induce, label, and pressure the censorship of disfavored content, viewpoints, and speakers on social-media platforms.”
The lawsuit contends the alleged suppression of free speech and collusion violate the protections of the First Amendment and amount to action in excess of statutory authority.
It also contends that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Missouri and Louisiana filed a Motion for Expedited Preliminary Injunction-Related Discovery on June 17, 2022.
In announcing the court’s decision to grant the attorneys general’s request, Schmitt said on Twitter, ” No one has had the chance to look under the hood before – now we do.”
“Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, other Biden administration officials and five social media companies have 30 days to respond to subpoenas in a lawsuit alleging collusion to suppress freedom of speech.
Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry were granted permission to proceed with the discovery phase of the trial last week in a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty. In addition to Fauci, who announced earlier this week he would retire in 2025, and Jean-Pierre, discovery requests were served to ask for information and documents from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Jen Easterly and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Nina Jankowicz, who led the DHS Disinformation Governance Board until it was disbanded. Third-party subpoenas were served to Twitter, YouTube, Meta, Instagram and LinkedIn.
A media release from Schmitt, a candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for the seat of retiring U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, stated information requested was identifying all communications with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation. It requests all communications with Mark Zuckerberg from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present. Also requested were any communications to any social media platform relating to the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a letter published in October 2020. The letter was published in response to COVID-19 policies that recommended “focused protection,” an approach to reaching herd immunity by allowing those at minimal risk of death to live normal lives by building up immunity through natural infection while protecting those at highest risk.
“In May, Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit against top-ranking Biden Administration officials for allegedly colluding with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security,” Schmitt said in a statement. “Earlier this month, a federal court granted our motion for expedited discovery, allowing us to collect important documents from Biden Administration officials. Yesterday, we served discovery requests and today served third-party subpoenas to do exactly that. We will fight to get to the bottom of this alleged collusion and expose the suppression of freedom of speech by social media giants at the behest of top-ranking government officials.”