Biden Admin Colluded With Social Media Platforms to Censor and Suppress Content
“The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General.”
Big Brother is watching you.
Missouri and Louisiana alleged that the Biden administration and Big Tech colluded to censor and suppress “misinformation.”
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt dropped a bunch of emails proving the “cozy relationship” between Big Tech and numerous departments within the Biden administration.
“Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit back in May that seeks to expose how top Biden Administration officials allegedly colluded with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on a number of topics, including COVID-19. We won in court in July, and the Court required the Biden Administration to turn over communications between federal officials and social media companies,” Schmitt wrote. “We have already received a number of documents that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we’re not done. The Department of Justice is cowering behind executive privilege and has refused to turn over communications between the highest-ranking Biden Administration officials and social media companies. That’s why, yesterday, we asked the Court to compel the Department of Justice to produce those records. We’re just getting started – stay tuned.”
Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a Joint Statement on Discovery Disputes “to compel the Department of Justice to turn over communications between high-ranking Biden Administration officials from the White House, Department of State, FBI and others and major social media companies.”
The email drop included 45 officials at the DHS, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), CDC, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Office of the Surgeon General.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, admitted that 32 officials talked with the company about “content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories to Defendants.” These officials belonged to the FDA, White House, and U.S. Election Assistance Commission
YouTube confirmed officials at the White House and the Census Bureau spoke to the company, “many of whom were also not disclosed by the Defendants.”
More from the joint statement:
The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials. More discovery is needed to uncover the full scope of this “Censorship Enterprise,” and thus allow Plaintiffs the opportunity to achieve fully effective injunctive relief. Defendants have objected to producing some of the most relevant and probative information in their possession—i.e., the identities, and nature and content of communications, of White House officials and officials at other federal agencies who are not yet Defendants in this case because they were unknown when Plaintiffs served their discovery six weeks ago. Defendants have objected to producing discovery that would reveal both the height and the breadth of the federal “Censorship Enterprise.” The Court should overrule these objections and order Defendants to provide this highly relevant, responsive, and probative information.
One email showed a White House official pushing Facebook to remove a parody Fauci account.
A White House official was even concerned about parody Fauci accounts and coordinated with Facebook to take them down. pic.twitter.com/UJwn6z7BOy
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) September 1, 2022
Twitter scheduled a meeting to debrief top White House Officials on “vaccine misinformation.” pic.twitter.com/KmYPMlCk8l
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) September 1, 2022
There are several instances where Facebook wouldn’t proceed with censoring freedom of speech on their platform until they had input, or a “debunking” from the CDC. Twitter followed the same course in at least one email. pic.twitter.com/9alXrgvq6P
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) September 1, 2022
The CDC also proposed 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. pic.twitter.com/oSAjbxbT8b
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) September 1, 2022
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Comments
Glad somebody is making trouble for the administration.
But nothing will ever happen.
If you don’t believe that, I have an AR-15 you can take over the border with you.
Consequences?
None.
Meanwhile, billions of people around the planet gladly surrender their privacy and freedom to watch weirdos dance to Nelly Furtado songs in the bathroom mirror.
How is this even news? We’ve known about this for a long time.
Knowing /suspecting/ inferring and having the proof in the form of email threads in which tech offers to do the bidding of govt, that govt directs X action and tech reports back that X action has been accomplished are worlds apart. The current info is the tip. The BS argument of ‘executive privilege’ being made by DoJ for WH communications won’t hold up. EP applies between a POTUS and his advisors. It can stretch to among his advisors. It can probobly stretch to include officially declared consultants. It cannot be stretched to include conversations between the WH staff and people outside govt. The discovery process in the suit by Missouri/Louisiana will reveal a great many more items.
For some voters the absence of that proof was enough of a fig leaf to provide plausible deniability for their support of Biden. That fig leaf, and many others, have been stripped away over the course of the Biden Admin. These folks now have a choice, double down on supporting Biden and his clearly totalitarian norm breaking or withhold their support. This is doubly so for the Never DJT camp. Any hope of their rehabilitation or redemption rests upon them directly, clearly and publicly denouncing these unconstitutional actions and demanding not only consequences for those involved but new safeguards to prevent it. If the only way to realistically preclude it is to decrease the reach of of big tech via breakup then so be it.
There’s a perfect storm coming. Democrats and progressives, seeking shortcuts to escape, are sailing straight into it. That’s what “smart” people do.
I doubt it our side is weak
The Dumb-o-crats are doing their best to imitate Soviet and Maoist apparatchiks of old. Mockery of the ruling class and dissenting opinions cannot be countenanced.
We knew this THREE YEARS AGO, and not only was nothing done, but Bitch McConnell declared that they would actively fight any attempt to repeal the tech platforms special protections.
They didn’t care because it let them get rid of Trump.
Dah!!!
This is as egregious and unapologetically brazen of a violation of the first amendment as one has ever seen in the tech era.
And nothing will be done about it.
Let’s do a little thought experiment.
If the Trump admin had asked Facebook/Twitter/Youtube to remove Antifa content for domestic terrorism, do you think they would have complied?
These Big Tech companies went along with the censorship, because they aligned with their agenda. They certainly would not have complied with Trump admin requests. If anything, if they were asked to do so, they would have immediately ran to the media screeching about how 1st amendment rights were being violated.
You don’t need a thought experiment. Every media outlet screamed about how Trump was going to shut down freedom of the press before he was even elected.
Does this present an opportunity for class action lawsuits against these big tech platforms for civil rights violations?