Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri have accused the Biden administration of “working hand-in-hand” with social media giants to “censor” news negatively affecting the White House.
“In this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between big tech and big government,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a statement Monday.
“This egregious attack on our First Amendment is met with an equally wholehearted defense of the rights of the American people.”
The 164-page lawsuit was filed late last week, but an updated filing Monday shows Republican officials are expanding their legal efforts to target 47 more government departments, agencies and officials in addition to the 20 defendants originally listed.
President Joe Biden, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Nina Jankowicz, who was supposed to head Biden’s now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board, are among dozens of defendants named in the lawsuit.
President Joe Biden and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre are two of the 67 government officials and entities named in the Louisiana and Missouri lawsuit
They said the head of Biden’s now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board “has called for more aggressive censorship of election-related speech by social media platforms and indicated that social media censorship of election-related speech should never be eased or reduced.”
The committee’s critics had called it “Orwellian” and derided Jankowicz as the White House’s “Mary Poppins of disinformation” after taking to social media to sing about the dangers of misinformation to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
It’s also a key focus of the Republican-led lawsuit, which alleges Jankowicz arranged a “cozy” meeting between Twitter executives and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other top officials to discuss “public-private partnerships” and election security .
“Jankowicz has called for more aggressive censorship of election-related speech by social media platforms and has indicated that social media censorship of election-related speech should never be relaxed or reduced,” the lawsuit reads.
Other issues the Biden administration has been accused of working on censorship include stories about COVID-19 and, more recently, insistence by White House officials that the US economy is not headed for a downturn.
‘[S]Social media platforms are beginning to censor criticism of the Biden administration’s attempt to redefine the word ‘recession’ amid recent news that the US economy has suffered two consecutive quarters of contraction in GDP the lawsuit.
It links to a Fox News article on Facebook reviewing an economist who claims the US is in a recession.
“Therefore, the conduct of the defendants alleged here has, with extraordinary effectiveness, created a situation in which Americans attempting to exercise their core right to free speech to criticize the President of the United States are subject to aggressive prior restrictions by private companies operating on… Act at the behest of government officials.’
Attorneys general argue that such reporting is “unacceptable” under First Amendment standards.
Examples of social media “censorship” in Louisiana and Missouri lawsuit
- On April 8, 2021, YouTube “deleted a video in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a handful of medical experts,” including plaintiffs Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, “questioned the effectiveness of having children wear masks in order to.” stop the spread of COVID-19 .”‘
- “On August 10, 2021, “YouTube banned Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) from uploading new videos to the site for seven days after the eye doctor posted a video last week arguing that most masks work against it ‘do not work’ the coronavirus.”‘
- “Twitter permanently suspended the account of prominent lockdown critic Alex Berenson, despite repeated assurances from senior Twitter executives that his account was safe, just days after Dr. Fauci singled it out as a danger for implying that young people could reasonably refuse the vaccine. ‘
- Perhaps most notorious, social media platforms leaked an Oct. 14, 2020 New York Post exposé of the contents of (the son of then-candidate Biden) Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had been left at a Delaware repair shop and compromising photos, aggressively censored, and email communications about corrupt overseas deals.
“As the New York Post reported at the time: “[b]oth Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday took extraordinary censorship measures against The Post for its exposés of Hunter Biden’s emails.
They also accuse the White House and related agencies of conducting “overt and explicit censorship programs.”
“After years of threatening and coaxing social media platforms to censor positions and speakers disapproved by the Left, senior government officials in the executive branch have entered a period of open collusion with social media companies to control unfavorable speakers, positions and content on social media platforms under the Orwellian guise of stopping so-called “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation,” the court filings said.
Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also plans to ask the court on Friday to force several “key defendants” to be deposed under oath.
They accused the 67 defendants of perpetrating an imbalance of power over social media companies by showering them with certain benefits and then threatening to take them away if tech execs didn’t comply.
The lawsuit is being led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (left) and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (right). Both are Republicans
The lawsuit argues that censoring stories on social media harms the American public’s access to information, as many people rely on such platforms to get their daily news.
It also suggests hypocrisy when it comes to what issues are considered problematic.
For example, Schmitt and Landry argue that YouTube’s misinformation policy is “overtly content- and view-oriented” because it censored topics related to 2020 voter fraud allegations, but not videos purporting to purportedly debunked ties between Donald Trump and Russia that circulated during the 2016 election.
“The defendants here, colluding and coordinating with each other, have also coordinated and colluded directly with social media platforms to identify disadvantaged speakers, viewpoints and content, thereby bringing about the actual censorship and suppression of free speech,” Landry and Schmitt lawsuit.
has reached out to the White House for comment.
Landry and Schmitt announced Monday that they would be adding 47 more defendants to the 20 already accused