Louisiana, Missouri AGs Request Court Block Biden Admin From Allegedly ‘Coercing And Colluding With Big Tech’
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on Monday to block top federal government officials from allegedly “coercing and colluding” with Big Tech to violate First Amendment rights.
The filing is the latest development in the ongoing Missouri v. Biden free speech lawsuit, which has resulted in the attorneys general gaining access to thousands of internal documents from the federal government. The filing cites 1,432 facts uncovered from these documents that allegedly show high ranking officials engaged in censorship activities in collaboration with social media platforms.
“This case involves some of the most egregious First Amendment violations in American history,” the attorneys general wrote in their filing. “Federal officials from the White House and multiple agencies use pressure, threats, coercion, cajoling, collusion, demands, and trickery and deceit to induce social-media platforms to censor speakers and viewpoints on social media that the federal officials disfavor.”
https://twitter.com/AGAndrewBailey/status/1632895481029206016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Included with the motion for a preliminary injunction is a 364-page document cataloging instances of alleged censorship, including Center for Disease Control (CDC) officials flagging social-media posts for removal, the FBI “deliberately” planting false information to convince social media platforms to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “switchboards” that allowed state and local election officials to flag misinformation, White House officials coercing platforms to censor certain views and Dr. Anthony Fauci inducing companies to censor the lab-leak theory, according to Attorney General Landry’s news release.
Previous documents obtained from the lawsuit, which was initially filed against the Biden administration by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general last May, revealed that the White House pressured Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson for claiming that vaccines “don’t work.”
“The overwhelming evidence is clear: the highest levels of our federal government are suppressing the First Amendment rights of Americans who have opposing views,” said Attorney General Landry in a statement. “This egregious and unlawful viewpoint censorship by the White House, FBI, CDC, CISA, and other agencies not only chills speech; but it also unjustly inflicts grave and irreparable injuries on citizens and states, whose duty it is to protect their fundamental rights.”
If granted, the preliminary injunction would prevent government officials from “taking any steps to demand, urge, encourage, pressure, coerce, deceive, collude with, or otherwise induce” social media companies to censor or take any “adverse action” against a speaker or viewpoint, according to the court filing.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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