The evidence revealed in a lawsuit reveals that Biden’s administration directly pressured social media companies to censor Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and to make his posts harder for people to access.
The revelations have come in the lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, filed by the state attorneys general from states including Louisiana and Texas. The evidence has come out during the trial’s discovery phase.
The information about the White House’s illegal and unconstitutional effort to end the free speech of Carlson and other conservatives came in the form of emails from the White House to Facebook demanding that the social media giant censor people.
Per PJ Media:
Then on April 14, 2021, Rob Flaherty, then director of digital strategy for the White House, wrote to a Facebook official (and copied Flaherty) complaining about a Tucker Carlson video discussing the risk of blood clots with the J&J COVID vaccine (you can read the emails for yourself below). “Since we’ve been on the phone—the top post about vaccines today is Tucker Carlson saying they don’t work. Yesterday was Tomi Lehren saying she won’t’ take one,” he said. “This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ [of posts from the vaccine hesitant] actually looks like—if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with tucker [sic] Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then…I’m not sure it’s reduction!”
The Facebook official replied, “Running this down now.”
Slavitt jumped into the email thread: “Number one on Facebook. Sigh. Big reveal call with FB and WH today. No progress since we spoke. Sigh.”
Apparently, Facebook didn’t respond quickly enough to the White House’s demands, so Flaherty shot back three hours later, “These questions weren’t rhetorical.”
The White House operative continued to badger Facebook to remove Carlson’s posts even as Facebook told him that Carlson’s posts did not qualify for removal under their policies.
This is flatly illegal behavior from the fascist Biden administration.
The federal government has no legal role in either determining what is “misleading” information nor in directing private companies to block or delete the dissemination of it and ban people who spread it.
Doing this is a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
It is bad enough when social media colludes with each other to shut conservatives out of the nation’s political discourse. But it is straight-up illegal for government officials to engage in that behavior.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
