Missouri sues Biden administration over “vast censorship enterprise”

The Biden administration tried to censor or suppress conservative voices and critics of its COVID policy, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey alleges in a lawsuit.

“This is about protecting the Constitution, and I couldn’t agree with those sentiments more,” Bailey says. “I’m proud to have partnered with the Louisiana attorney general on this case, because it’s the most important First Amendment case in a generation. We’ve uncovered a vast censorship enterprise, coercion and collusion between officials at the White House and across federal bureaucratic agencies and their cronies in big tech and social media to target and censor free speech in America.”

Earlier this month, Bailey released a statement chronicling several legal “exhibits” germane to the case, which include an attempt by the White House to get Twitter to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Bailey characterized Kennedy, who has questioned aspects of the coronavirus vaccines, as “a known critic of the White House’s COVID-19 narrative.”

Another exhibit alleges White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty “demand[ed] Facebook step up its operations of ‘removing bad information’ on vaccines,” while others scolded Facebook for not taking substantive action against posts by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“We’re going to continue to root out this vast censorship enterprise that violates Americans free speech,” Bailey said. “And we’re not going to stop. But the key piece of evidence we found is that there were individuals with the White House specifically targeting conservative voices on big tech social media.”

Topics the White House purportedly wanted suppressed including not only COVID-19 vaccine reticence but claims of 2020 election interference and the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop.

“What that did was they coerced the big tech NS social media companies into suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story,” he said. “Now, that’s information Americans deserve to hear. They deserve to have that information in free, fair and open debate to make good decisions at the ballot box. They were deprived of that information.”

Here are the various exhibits:

• The White House asks Twitter to censor Robert Kennedy, Jr., a known critic of the White House’s COVID-19 narrative
• The White House directs Facebook to shut down conservative voices Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren
• White House Digital Director Flaherty scolds Facebook, saying that he “really couldn’t care less about products unless they’re having measureable impact” at suppressing speech
• Flaherty informs Facebook that “misinformation around the vaccine” is “a concern shared at the highest (and I mean highest) level of the WH”
• Flaherty demands that Facebook to step up its operations of “removing bad information” on vaccines
• In regard to “anti-vax” posts, Flaherty tells Facebook that “slowing it down seems reasonable”
• Facebook assures Flaherty that “in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation,” including “often-true content”
• Flaherty vehemently disagrees with Facebook’s decision not to take down a Tucker Carlson video on COVID-19 vaccines, stating “not for nothing but last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection”
• Flaherty tells Twitter that “if your product is appending misinformation to our tweets that seems like a pretty fundamental issue”
• Facebook assures Flaherty that they “remove claims public health authorities tell us have been debunked or are unsupported by evidence”
• Flaherty accuses Twitter of “Total Calvinball” and “bending over backwards” to tolerate disfavored speech after Twitter refuses to comply with White House demands to censor a video

–Dwight Widaman | MV