In a September 1, 2022, article,1
the Post Millennial reveals how federal officials in the Biden
administration have held secret censorship meetings with social media
companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech,
and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID
and vaccines.
The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit2
brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general
of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against
President Biden, filed in May 2022.
During the discovery process, the plaintiffs sought to identify “all
meetings with any social media platform relating to content modulation
and/or misinformation,” which is how we now know that such illegal
meetings did, in fact, take place.
Illegal Collusion to Suppress Free Speech
Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and
may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government
agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and
suppressed were/are discussed.
Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal,
especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof,
criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health,
posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab,
personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual
irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory.3 According to the New Civil Liberties Alliance:4
“... scores of federal officials ... have secretly
communicated with social-media platforms to censor and suppress private
speech federal officials disfavor. This unlawful enterprise has been
wildly successful.
Under the First
Amendment, the federal government may not police private speech nor pick
winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is precisely
what the government has done — and is still doing — on a massive scale
not previously divulged.
Multiple agencies’ communications demonstrate that
the federal government has exerted tremendous pressure on social-media
companies — pressure to which companies have repeatedly bowed ...
Communications show these federal officials are fully
aware that the pressure they exert is an effective and necessary way to
induce social-media platforms to increase censorship. The head of the
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency even griped about the
need to overcome social-media companies’ ‘hesitation’ to work with the
government ...
This unlawful government interference violates the
fundamental right of free speech for all Americans, whether or not they
are on social media. More discovery is needed to uncover the full extent
of this regime — i.e., the identities of other White House and agency
officials involved and the nature and content of their communications
with social-media companies.”
Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance added:5
“If there was ever any doubt the federal government
was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official
COVID messaging, that doubt has been erased. The shocking extent of the
government’s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing
social-media companies, has now been revealed ...”
Federal Agencies Involved in Free Speech Suppression
Documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal
employees across 15 federal agencies, who participated in these
censorship meetings or otherwise engaged in illegal censorship
activities.6 This includes officials from:
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team |
Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis |
The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce |
The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division |
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence |
White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana
Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White
House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt) |
Health and Human Services (HHS) |
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) |
National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) |
The Office of the Surgeon General |
The Census Bureau |
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) |
The State Department |
The U.S. Treasury Department |
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission |
Emails from a strategic communications and marketing firm called Reingold7
also reveals that outside consultants were hired to manage the
government’s collusion with social media to censor Americans. For
example, Reingold set up a “partner support portal” for the CDC so that
CDC officials could link emails to the portal for easier flagging of
content it wanted censored by social media companies linked to the
portal.
Big Tech Companies Involved in Government Censorship
On the private industry side, notable tech participants in the censorship meetings include:
Google |
Facebook |
Twitter |
YouTube |
Reddit |
Microsoft |
Verizon Media |
Pinterest |
LinkedIn |
Wikimedia Foundation |
While some social media companies may have “hesitated” to censor on
the government’s behalf at times, Facebook was certainly an eager beaver
from the get-go. As early as February 2020, Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg was in contact with the State Department, offering its
services to help “control information and misinformation related to
coronavirus.”8
Biden Administration’s ‘Executive Privilege’ Denied
As you might expect, the White House has not cooperated with
discovery and have fought to keep communications secret — especially
with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s correspondence — claiming all White
House communications as “privileged.”
However, executive privilege does NOT apply to external
communications, so the plaintiffs called on the U.S. District Court for
the Western District of Louisiana to “overrule the government
defendants’ objections and order them to supply this highly relevant,
responsive and probative information immediately.”
September 7, 2022, Judge Terry Doughty did just that. The Biden
administration’s claim of executive privilege was rejected and Doughty
ordered the White House to hand over any and all relevant records.9
That includes correspondence to and from Fauci, White House press
secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and many others. According to the judge’s
order, they have three weeks to comply.
Examples of Illegal Government Censorship
On Twitter,10
Missouri AG Schmitt has shared a long list of examples of government
censorship, including one document in which Clarke Humphrey, COVID-19
response digital director at the White House, asked Facebook to take
down the Instagram account “anthonyfauciofficial,” a parody account
dedicated to making fun of Fauci.11 Facebook complied.
Schmitt also shared emails12,13
between a senior Facebook official and the surgeon general, stating, “I
know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the
White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email
came on the heels of the surgeon general’s July 2021 “misinformation
health advisory.”
The CDC also coordinated with Facebook, providing them with talking
points to debunk various claims, including the claim that spike protein
in the COVID shots is dangerous and cytotoxic. In a July 28, 2021,
email, a CDC official provided Facebook with the following
counter-narrative, taken straight from the “How mRNA Vaccines Work”
section on the CDC website:14
“Messenger mRNA [sic] vaccines work by teaching our cells to create a harmless spike protein ...” (Emphasis in the original.)
Fast-forward to mid-June 2022, and the CDC was suddenly less sure about the harmlessness of the spike protein.
Up until then, the words “harmless spike protein” had always been
bolded, but in this June revision, they removed the bolding, along with
an entire section in which they’d previously claimed that mRNA was
rapidly broken down and spike protein did not last more than a few weeks
in the body.15 Clearly, the truth was catching up to them and certain lies were getting too risky to hold on to.
CISA also reached out to Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft and Twitter for help, shortly after the DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board was announced.16 Fortunately, public outcry put an end to this Orwellian Ministry of Truth before it got started.
When Censorship Becomes Election Interference
According to The Washington Times:17
“Details about the Biden administration’s conduct
raised the hackles of Republican lawmakers. ‘Confirming that this is the
most dangerously anti-free speech administration in American history
AND that Facebook ... is nothing but an appendage of the deep state,’
Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said on Twitter as he shared news
of the court filing.”
Other lawmakers are also getting involved. In an August 29, 2022, letter18,19
to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A.
Wray, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of
Wisconsin requested records of the government’s contacts with social
media companies to ascertain whether the FBI and/or DOJ did, in fact,
instruct them to censor information about the Hunter Biden laptop
scandal by falsely referring to it as “Russian disinformation.”20
Zuckerberg has also been asked21
to provide any correspondence involving the censorship of the Hunter
Biden laptop story, especially as it pertains to the FBI’s instructions
to censor this political hot potato — something he openly admitted in a
recent Joe Rogan interview (see video above).22
Lawmakers Pursue Legislation to Penalize Gov’t Censorship
Three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and
Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees — Reps. James Comer of
Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington —
have also introduced the Protecting Speech from Government Interference
Act23
(HR.8752), aimed at preventing federal employees from using their
positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.
The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from
asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or
otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil
fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate
social media censorship.
While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and
restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool,
as people might tend to think twice when they know there’s a real and
personal price to pay.