Republican Attorneys General Suing the Tech Monopolies Discover Evidence of Close Coordination Between the Government, FBI, and "Private" Corporations to Censor Citizens' Speech and Violate the First Amendment

Quick, Conservative, Inc.! Earn your paychecks by attacking Eric Schmidt and Josh Hawley! Your paymasters are demanding you earn your keep!

As usual, I'm quoting the text from AG Eric Schmitt's account, but you'll have to see his twitter thread for links to the supporting documents.

Eric Schmitt @Eric_Schmitt

US Senate candidate, MO

In May, We filed a landmark lawsuit against top ranking Biden Admin. officials for colluding with social media companies to censor free speech. We have already received documents that show their cozy relationship, and now we're demanding more.

In July of 2022, MO and LA served discovery requests and third-party subpoenas, demanding documents from top-ranking Biden Administration officials and social media companies over their alleged collusion to suppress freedom of speech.

The Department of Justice is refusing to produce communications between the most senior officials and social media companies -- yesterday we filed a joint petition asking the Court to compel them to produce those documents.

Conservative, Inc. was an implacable foe of Donald Trump, but will make no demands of transparency here.

Because they're literally on the take. They're being paid to defend Monopoly Tech -- and the Biden Administration.

Here's what we know so far. DOJ identified 45 federal officials who have interacted with social media companies on misinformation.

Beyond DOJ, Meta identified 32 additional federal officials including White House Officials who communicated with them, and YouTube identified 11 federal officials including White House Officials who communicated with them, many of whom were not disclosed by DOJ.

This is a vast censorship enterprise, and the American people deserve to see the truth. Here are examples that already prove that federal officials and social media companies are coordinating on censorship, and we're not close to being done yet:

A senior FB official sent an email to 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 chain follows the SG's "misinformation health advisory" in July 2021.

Further communications show that Facebook is "increasing the strength of our demotions for COVID and vaccine-related content that third party fact checkers rate as 'Partly False' or 'Missing Context.'

That content will now be demoted at the same strength that we demote any content on our platform rated 'False.'"

Twitter scheduled a meeting to debrief top White House Officials on "vaccine misinformation."

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.

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.

A White House official was even concerned about parody Fauci accounts and coordinated with Facebook to take them down.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reached out to Twitter, Google, Meta, and Microsoft following the botched rollout of DHS' Disinformation Governance Board:

The Deputy Secretary at Treasury sought to connect with social media platforms and influence operations on social media.

This is just the beginning. We've beat the Biden Administration in court in this case, and we plan to do it again.

Missouri and Louisiana will continue to fight to get to the bottom of this alleged collusion and expose the suppression of freedom of speech by social media giants at the behest of top-ranking government officials.

Translation: The govt reminded social media it was their job to regulate content on their sites that is not covered by Section 230 or 1A such as violence, misinformation, & disinformation, because the social media companies in a time of great need were not being responsible!

Meanwhile, Republican Senators are demanding FaceBook turn over all documents regarding their little chats with the FBI and other Censorship Agents of the US Government regarding Hunter Biden's laptop.

Republican senators are demanding that Facebook turn over its communications with the FBI regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.

"The American people deserve to know whether the FBI used Facebook as part of their alleged plan to discredit information about Hunter Biden," Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Wire. Mark Zuckerberg's admission to podcast host Joe Rogan that Facebook decreased distribution of the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election at the bidding of the FBI has sparked a massive backlash.

The White House used "private" corporations to illegally enforce their own censorship demands, violating the First Amendment.

Jonathan S. Tobin at The Federalist:

As far as the managerial class was concerned, Twitter's permanent ban of journalist and author Alex Berenson in August 2021 was entirely justified. Indeed, most of the reaction to his ban consisted of mockery of the lawsuit he subsequently filed to force Twitter to reinstate him.

Since his ban, Berenson has not only been vindicated, but news surfaced that his silencing was the direct result of a request from the White House.

Documents Berenson obtained during the discovery phase of the lawsuit he filed against Twitter illustrate how the government actively works to shut down free speech on issues of public interest. Berenson's criticisms of the Covid vaccines, which he claimed were ineffective and possibly harmful, came exactly at the time when the federal government, as well as many states and cities, were using every available coercive means at their disposal to force Americans to take them. As such, his speech was deemed extremist and needed to be suppressed to save lives during the pandemic.

While President Biden blithely labels his political opponents as "semi-fascists," it is he who has been playing the part of a fascist by using powerful corporations to stifle opposition. And thus, Berenson's Twitter ban must be acknowledged as a rank injustice.

...

There are two important takeaways from this development.

First, everyone must now acknowledge Berenson's views that were labeled wrongthink a year ago were largely correct about the shortcomings of Covid vaccines.

The second point concerns the way the government used a public health emergency not only to seize unprecedented power but to trash civil liberties by leveraging the resources of Big Tech companies.

As Steven Green comments at Instapundit: "There's no more pretending that the social media giants don't act as arms of the federal government."

And yet Conservative, Inc., Monster Tech's Cash-Money Praetorian, is in fact continuing to pretend.

What should be the consequences for this?

What should be the consequences for Conservative, Inc. taking money to defend Monopoly Tech's "right" to steal your right to speak?

Shouldn't their right to speak be taken away in return? In other words, shouldn't we insist that those still flacking for their Monopoly Tech paymasters, defending them for censoring us, be purged from every "conservative" magazine, else we boycott?

Turnabout is fair play.

posted by Ace at 05:43 PM

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