A federal judge has ordered the deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci and a number of other high-ranking Biden officials about the government’s alleged collusion with social media companies to ‘suppress free speech’
Friday, the court granted Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s motion.
According to a source, both accused the Biden administration of ‘working hand-in-hand’ with social media giants to ‘suppress’ news reports that reflect adversely on the White House, calling it a ‘egregious attack on our First Amendment’
The lawsuit asserts that the Biden administration deliberately urged social media corporations to restrict ‘disfavored’ opinions and speakers in violation of the First Amendment rights of those individuals.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty stated in his finding that Fauci’s earlier public statements regarding national pandemic policy made him a significant figure in the case and ordered his deposition.
Schmitt stated, “The American people demand answers regarding the federal government’s collusion with social media corporations to restrict free speech.”
On October 5, 2022, in New York City, Dr. Anthony Fauci is spotted walking around midtown.
Other high-ranking personnel that must be deposed include former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, and former Senior White House COVID-19 Advisory Andrew Slavitt.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, CISA Director Jen Easterly or CISA official Lauren Protentis, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, CDC Chief of the Digital Media Branch Carol Crawford, and State Department Global Engagement Center Acting Coordinator Daniel Kimmage are also deposed.
Landry said in a statement on Monday, “Throughout this case, we have revealed a frightening degree of collaboration between Big Tech and Big Government.”
The 164-page lawsuit was filed late last week, but an amended filing on Monday shows that the Republican officials are expanding their legal efforts to include 47 other government departments, agencies, and officials in addition to the original 20 defendants.
The action names dozens of defendants, including President Joe Biden, current Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Nina Jankowicz, who was to lead Biden’s now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board.
Maggie Haberman of The New York Times (shown left) and Jen Psaki, former White House Press Secretary (seen right), appear on Meet the Press on Sunday, October 9 in Washington, D.C.
On October 14, in Raymore, Missouri, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (right) addresses the media during a rally outside the offices of Mark Alford, Republican candidate for Missouri’s 4th Congressional District. He is shown alongside Ted Cruz (left)
‘Finally, Plaintiffs believe that Dr. Fauci’s reliability has been called into question since 2020 regarding alleged COVID-19’misinformation’ Plaintiffs claim that Dr. Fauci has made public remarks regarding the effectiveness of masks, the population percentage required for herd immunity, NIAID’s funding of ‘gain-of-function’ viral research in Wuhan, the lab-leak theory, and more,’ he said.
“Plaintiffs insist that Dr. Fauci’s remarks on these significant problems are pertinent to the case at hand and constitute further grounds for his deposition.” Plaintiffs contend that they should not be obliged to accept at face value Dr. Fauci’s’self-serving blanket denials’ given by someone other than himself. He continued, “The Court concurs.”
Donald Trump’s appointee Doughty dismissed the Justice Department’s attempt to invoke executive privilege, arguing that the privilege would only apply to internal administration emails. He ruled that emails with outside executives were fair game.
In his 10-page judgment, the court stated that their correspondence is “clearly highly significant” to the case.
The court filing claims that Dr. Fauci’s communications would be relevant to the plaintiffs’ accusations regarding the claimed suppression of speech regarding the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin and the alleged suppression of speech about the effectiveness of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns.
Jean-conversations Pierre’s as White House Press Secretary may be pertinent to all of the plaintiffs’ examples.
Examples of social media “censorship” in the case between Louisiana and Missouri
‘On April 8, 2021, YouTube “removed a video in which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and a few medical professionals,” including Plaintiffs Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, “questioned the efficacy of requiring children to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
‘ ‘On August 10, 2021, “YouTube restricted Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) from adding new videos to the platform for seven days, after the ophthalmologist uploaded a video last week saying that most masks ‘don’t work’ against the coronavirus.
‘Twitter permanently suspended the account of prominent lockdown critic Alex Berenson, despite repeated assurances from high-level Twitter executives that his account was safe, just days after Dr. Fauci singled him out as a danger for suggesting young people might reasonably decline the vaccine.
‘ ‘Perhaps most notoriously, social-media platforms aggressively censored an October 14, 2020 New York Post exposé about the contents of (then-Candidate Biden’s) laptop. As reported by the New York Post at the time, “both Twitter and Facebook adopted exceptional censoring steps against The Post on Wednesday due to its exposés on Hunter Biden’s emails.”