The Revelations Of Government Censorship Keep Coming In Missouri v. Biden

A little over a year ago, on May 5, 2022, two states (Missouri and Louisiana) and several individual plaintiffs filed suit against the federal government for illegally and improperly suppressing free speech on social media platforms, in violation of the First Amendment. The case goes by the name Missouri v. Biden. The individual plaintiffs include, for example, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, prominent medical researchers and epidemiologists who dissented from the government’s Covid response orthodoxy and saw their speech ruthlessly suppressed as a consequence.

This case is probably the most important civil rights case proceeding in the federal courts today. If you get your news from such sources as the New York Times, Washington Post, or major television networks, you likely have never heard of it. (One site that has been on top of this case is the Hot Air website.)

The case was brought in the Western District of Louisiana, and the judge assigned is Terry Doughty. Counsel for the plaintiffs include the AG’s offices of Missouri and Louisiana, and also the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

Early on in the case (June 14, 2022) the plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction, asking to have the court order the government to cease its illegal conduct. Here, from the June 2022 motion, is the gist of the relief that the plaintiffs requested at the outset:

[A] preliminary injunction preventing Defendants, and their agents, officers, employees, contractors and all those acting in concert with them, from taking any steps to demand, urge, encourage, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media company or platform for online speech, or any employee, officer, or agent of any such company or platform, to censor, suppress, remove, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to content, or take any other adverse action against any speaker, content, or viewpoint expressed on social media.

The plaintiffs also at that time asked for discovery, so that they could uncover the extent of the government’s censorship regime. The court granted broad discovery, and there has been extensive discovery in the intervening year, the results of which have been quite shocking.

During May 2023 the parties completed their briefing on the motion for a preliminary injunction. The plaintiffs’ Reply brief was filed on May 22, and the court then held a hearing for something like 4 hours on May 26. As far as I can determine, no transcript of the court hearing has yet been made publicly available. However, there are some substantial quotes from the hearing available on the Twitter account of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The Plaintiffs’ Reply brief is some 125 pages long, but let me give you a few choice quotes so you can get an idea what was going on between the government and the social media lords. In the early days of the Biden White House, the censorship efforts focused on Covid 19 matters (although it did not take long for the Biden team to branch out into other things, from climate change to claims of election fraud to transgender issues). As to Covid 19, the government tries to justify its conduct on the basis that it was not pressuring platforms to suppress speech, but only trying to “better understand” what was going on. From plaintiffs’ Reply brief, pages 20-21:

No rational reader could interpret [White House functionary] Flaherty’s emails as a mere exercise in armchair philosophy, and the platforms certainly did not do so. They got the clear message: the White House’s demand that they “do more” to censor. . . . The very first email the White House sent [to Facebook], barely two days into the Biden Administration, demanded not to “better understand,” but to remove supposed “misinformation.” Citing a post about Hank Aaron’s death after taking the COVID vaccine, Clarke Humphry wrote at 1:04 a.m. on January 23, 2021: “Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.” . . .

Shortly thereafter, Flaherty launched his campaign of badgering, harassment, and pressure—all designed toward a single end: to push platforms (especially Facebook) to take more aggressive action against viewpoints disfavored by the White House. When Facebook reported to the White House on steps it was taking to “Combat[] Vaccine Misinformation,” Flaherty responded with a barrage of questions seeking detailed information about Facebook’s censorship practices, including “How are you handling things that are dubious, but not provably false?” Id. ¶¶ 42-43. Like all subsequent questions, the tenor of these questions was not merely to “better understand” Facebook’s practices, but to scrutinize and pressure them to take more aggressive action. Flaherty drove this point home by accusing Facebook of fomenting “political violence” by not censoring enough speech: “especially given the Journal’s reporting on your internal work onpolitical violence spurred by Facebook groups, I am also curious about the new rules as part of the ‘overhaul.’” Id. ¶ 44. Facebook, again, got the message—its response explained to Flaherty that it was removing content that the White House disfavored, and it promised to begin “enforcing this new policy immediately.” Id. ¶ 45.

It goes on and on with dozens and dozens of further examples. Here are a couple more from page 25:

¶ 100 (Facebook assuring the White House, in response to their demands about Tucker Carlson’s content, that it “will continue to be demoted even though it was not ultimately fact checked”); id. ¶ 104 (Twitter suspended Alex Berenson immediately after the President said, “They’re killing people”)

I can’t even keep track of the large number of government agencies and government-funded apparatchiks who have gotten in on the censorship game. Besides the White House itself, there has been everything from CDC, to Fauci’s group (NIAID), to the Surgeon General, to something called CISA, to the Stanford Internet Observatory, to the Virality Project — and I’m sure that I have only scratched the surface.

At the oral argument, the judge reserved more than an hour for himself to ask questions to the parties’ attorneys. Reportedly, most of the questions went to the government. Here are a few, as reported at the Twitter account of the Missouri AG:

The judge . . . asked Biden's lawyers if the First Amendment covered Americans' right to say that Biden is responsible for high gas prices and inflation. Their answer? It depends.

The judge questioned the feds on several hypotheticals, asking if the First Amendment applied. He asked if an American citizen questioning the safety or efficacy of masks or a vaccine was protected under the First Amendment. The feds' answer? "It COULD be" but often won’t be.

With regard to the Covid 19 information that was suppressed at the instance of the White House — things like the inefficacy of lockdowns and masks, the benefits of therapeutic drugs, and the dangers and side effects of vaccines — nearly all of it has proven to be true. The censorship regime is all about only letting one narrative see the light of day. Somehow, hundreds of people get involved in this, and they all are able to convince themselves that they are the good guys.

The judge reserved decision after the hearing, but from the reports on the proceedings, it would appear that a strong order will be issued shortly.

“As a subset of that, I think that all — that means “all” — government employees involved in violations of the Constitution should be executed for treason. “

It is my understanding that ALL federal employees must take an oath to defend the Constitution. Which suggests your “all” would be covered, as a betrayal of that oath.

Next comes the legal question of what constitutes treason. Some may argue that many failures to adhere to the oath of office, by tens of thousands of federal employees, are merely wrong, and cause for removal from office, but amount to willful negligence of their duty [they need to understand the Constitution, and then - if they do and orders they are given are wrong, and resign instead of doing what they were told] and not treason in every instance. Many such instances would be persons whose direct actions may violate the constitution in some sense but their actions were not of their own design but just following the demands of their higher ups.

In my view both Obama and Biden violated their oaths of office by demanding agencies reporting to them carryout actions for which the executive alone cannot dictate, but did. Particularly in “immigration” matters. But when was the last time a President was impeached for Treason with that Treason being identified by wrongful excecutive orders. Congress has gotten so complacent with regard to the Presidents’ executive orders that their - Congress - own authority, is at times a joke.

Here is a link, but if you receive an error, the text of the order is below:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_2.pdf

State of Georgia v. Joe Biden, et al.

For the reasons set forth in the Memorandum Ruling on the Request for Preliminary Injunction,
IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that Plaintiffs’ Motion for
Preliminary Injunction [Doc. No. 10] is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that: the DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN
SERVICES (“HHS”) and THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND
INFECTIOUS DISEASES (“NIAID”), and specifically the following employees of the HHS [Here it lists an entire list of employees of the HHS and other agencies] along with their secretary, directors, administrators, and employees ARE HEREBY
ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from taking the following actions as to social-media
companies:
(1) meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging,
pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content
containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms;
(2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding
such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for
removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;
(3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media
companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content
containing protected free speech;
(4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any
kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for
removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;
(5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working
with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or
any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any
manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media
companies containing protected free speech;
(6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to
remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech;
“Protected free speech” means speech that is protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in accordance with jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court,Courts of Appeal and District Courts.

(7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any
manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected
by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;
(8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media
companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing
protected free speech;
(9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to
remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and
(10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings
containing protected free speech.
This Preliminary Injunction precludes said named Defendants, their agents, officers, employees,
contractors, and all acting in concert with them from the aforementioned conduct. This Preliminary
Injunction also precludes said named Defendants, their agents, officers, employees, and
contractors from acting in concert with others who are engaged in said conduct.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this
Preliminary Injunction:
(1) informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or
criminal conspiracies;
(2) contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats,
extortion, or other threats posted on its platform;
(3) contacting and/or notifying social-media companies about criminal efforts to
suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election
infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections;

(4) informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or
security of the United States;
(5) exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies
or views on matters of public concern;
(6) informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about
voting requirements and procedures;
(7) informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect,
prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity;
(8) communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing,
suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the
Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that no security is required to be posted by Plaintiffs under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this Preliminary Injunction Order shall remain in effect
pending the final resolution of this case or until further orders issue from this Court, the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, or the Supreme Court of the United States.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERD that the Motion for Preliminary Injunction [Doc. No. 10] is
DENIED as to the following Defendants: U.S. Food and Drug Administration; U. S. Department
of Treasury; U.S. Election Assistance Commission; U. S. Department of Commerce and
employees Erica Jefferson, Michael Murray, Wally Adeyemo, Steven Frid, Brad Kimberly, and
Kristen Muthig; and Disinformation Governance Board (“DGB”) and its Director Nina Jankowicz.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that no evidentiary hearing is required at this time.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiffs’ request for certification of this proceeding
as a class action pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. Article 23 (b)(2) is DENIED.

[Signed by Terry A. Doughty
United States District Judge]

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