The Biden administration has been pummeled with criticism regarding various scandals, government overreach, and political revenge — and House Republicans have vowed to use their majority status to conduct investigations into multiple aspects of the federal government’s actions.
On the state level, however, GOP leaders have already been taking such action. This week, a pair of attorneys general provided the latest development in a free speech lawsuit against the White House regarding the federal government’s allegedly improper influence in the content moderation practices of major social media platforms.
The issue has gained significant attention through the release of internal Twitter documents that show, among other things, the apparent intelligence community coercion that resulted in censoring reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Attorneys General Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Andrew Bailey of Missouri filed a motion this week seeking a preliminary injunction against federal officials in an effort to prevent them from “coercing and colluding” further with such tech companies.
Louisiana, Missouri AGs Request Court Block Biden Admin From Allegedly ‘Coercing And Colluding With #BigTech’: by Katelynn Richardson at CDN –
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a motion for a… https://t.co/k7xyarxAbq pic.twitter.com/D5tKwyy68c
— Conservative Daily News (@CDNPosts) March 7, 2023
The goal of the motion is to prevent entities and officials within the federal government from “taking any steps” compelling social media sites to censor content while curtailing “adverse action” against users based on their personal points of view.
Landry and Bailey included a trove of evidence uncovered from thousands of documents related to the issue, asserting that they have identified “some of the most egregious First Amendment violations in American history.”
Offering some insight into the type of unconstitutional behavior they attribute to the Biden administration, they added: “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.”
Among the specific examples included in the 364-page document that accompanies their motion is evidence allegedly demonstrating censorship by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pertaining to COVID-19, false information provided by the FBI related to the aforementioned laptop story, and a pathway created by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency whereby state and local election officials could throttle supposed misinformation.
Landry asserted that the “overwhelming evidence” is more than enough to prove that “the highest levels of our federal government are suppressing the First Amendment rights of Americans who have opposing views.”
