Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry have filed suit against President Biden and other top-ranking government officials for allegedly working with social media giants to censor and suppress free speech, including truthful information, related to Covid-19, election integrity, and other topics, under the guise of combating “misinformation.”

In the lawsuit that Missouri and Louisiana filed today, we allege that government officials in the Biden Administration, including President Biden, Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and others colluded with social media companies like Meta, Twitter, and Youtube to remove truthful information related to the lab-leak theory, the efficacy of masks, election integrity, and more.

I will not stand idly by while the Biden Administration attempts to trample on the First Amendment rights of Missourians and Americans.”

Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Missouri

Big Tech has become an extension of Biden’s Big Government, and neither are protecting the freedoms of Americans; rather, they are suppressing truth and demonizing those who think differently. Ripped from the playbook of Stalin and his ilk, Biden has been colluding with Big Tech to censor free speech and propagandize the masses.

We are fighting back to ensure the rule of law and prevent the government from unconstitutional banning, chilling, and stifling of speech.”

Attorney General Jeff Landry, Louisiana

According to Schmitt and Landry, the lawsuit provides several examples of truthful information that was censored by social media companies that were admitted at a later date to be truthful or credible, including:

• The Hunter Biden Laptop Story: As the lawsuit notes, the New York Post published a story in October of 2020 detailing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop that was abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop, which included compromising pictures and emails. Twitter locked the New York Post’s main Twitter account and blocked other users from publishing the link to the story as it was “potentially harmful.” Now, 17 months later, the New York Times and the Washington Post have both quietly published stories that acknowledge the truth and veracity of the New York Post’s original reporting.

• The Lab Leak Theory: The lawsuit also cites Facebook’s censorship of posts that theorized that Covid-19 could have been leaked accidentally from a biotech lab in Wuhan, China. The suit states, “On information and belief, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a senior federal government official, coordinating with others, orchestrated a campaign to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis in early 2020… At the same time as he was orchestrating a campaign to falsely discredit the lab-leak theory, Dr. Fauci was exchanging emails with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, regarding the control and dissemination of Covid-19 information.” Facebook then expanded its content moderation to censor posts that made claims that Covid-19 was lab or man-made. Only after a large number of major media outlets confirmed that the lab-leak theory was a possibility did Facebook stop censoring user posts related to the lab-leak theory.

• The Efficacy of Masks: The lawsuit notes, Twitter’s “Covid-19 misleading information policy,” as of December 2021, noted that Twitter will censor (label or remove) speech claiming that “face masks … do not work to reduce transmission or to protect against Covid-19,” among many other restrictions.  Other platforms had similar policies. Both Senator Rand Paul and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were censored by YouTube for questioning the efficacy of masks. Further, the lawsuit cites a New York Post article that states, “When Scott Atlas, a member of the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, questioned the efficacy of masks last year, Twitter removed his tweet.” Now, a growing body of science shows that masks, especially cloth masks, are ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid-19, and can impose negative impacts on children.

The lawsuit incorporates four counts: (1) Violation of the First Amendment,  (2) Action in Excess of Statutory Authority, and (3) Administrative Procedure Act Violations by HHS officials, and (4) Administrative Procedure Act violations by DHS officials.
 
Read the full lawsuit here.