(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) A federal judge has granted a request for expedited discovery made by two red-state attorneys general as they attempt to expose the Biden administration’s efforts to collude with Big Tech to deny Americans their First Amendment rights, American Greatness reported.
🚨BREAKING: Missouri and Louisiana just filed suit against Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, Dr. Fauci, and other top-ranking officials for allegedly colluding with social media companies to suppress freedom of speech under the guise of combating “misinformation.”
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— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) May 5, 2022
On July 12, Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted Missouri AG Eric Schmitt‘s and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry’s motion for expedited discovery in the case, and set a schedule for that discovery to take place.
“Today, the Court granted our motion for discovery, paving the way for my Office to gather important documents to get to the bottom of that alleged collusion,” Schmitt said in a press release lauding the decision. “[T]his is a huge development.”
The suit, which was filed on May 5, accused President Joe Biden and his administration of bullying social-media companies into participating with the feds in “open and explicit censorship programs” attacking those who question the narrative on—among other things—COVID-19, election integrity and Hunter Biden’s so-called laptop from Hell.
“[S]enior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,'” the AGs wrote.
The complaint named Biden, former press secretary Jen Psaki, Homeland Security Secretary Xavier Becerra, former COVID czar Anthony Fauci, and former “disinformation” minister Nina Jankowicz, among others.
The Missouri and Louisiana AGs suggested that the “unprecedented rise of censorship and suppression of free speech—including core political speech—on social-media platforms” has led to the chilling of “perfectly legitimate, responsible viewpoints.”
Public backlash has since led the Democrat adminsitration to backpedal some on its overt censorship demands.
Criticism of Jankowicz’s poor record on judging misinformation and her history of offering controversial and highly partisan remarks compelled the Homeland Security Department to suspend its plans for a Disinformation Governance Board.
Left-wing media and social-media companies also have been hit hard by the perception that they function as propagandist arms of the unpopular Biden administration, leading to loss in revenue that has made them vulnerable to corporate restructuring.
Facing the threat of a hostile takeover by red-pilled billionaire Elon Musk, Twitter laid off many of its more radical engineers and appears to have revamped its censorship algorithms somewhat—leading conservative public figures to gain thousands of followers.
A Republican wave in the 2022 midterm election will almost certainly lead to greater oversight of Big Tech censorship, if not the passage of legislation such as a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the antiquated legal loophole that affords special protections to online content publishers.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
