Court Win: Biden Used Lies to Illegally Deplatform Mercola

Via Mercola

Story at-a-glance

• In May 2022, the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry, along with the New Civil Liberties Alliance and a few individual plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit against Biden, arguing the White House is engaged in illegal suppression of protected speech
• Discovery documents show at least 67 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies have been engaged in illegal censorship activities
• In early July 2023, Judge Terry Doughty granted the plaintiffs’ injunction, prohibiting federal agencies and Biden administration officials from working with social media companies to limit protected speech
• September 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld part of the lower court’s injunction, banning the White House, surgeon general, CDC and FBI from influencing social media companies to remove “disinformation.” This is a major win, but amendments to the injunction may leave loopholes
• Most disturbingly, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is excluded from the appellate court’s injunction. CISA appears to have played a major role in the government’s censorship of Americans, so by excluding CISA, government censorship may continue via third party partners

Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files¹ released by Elon Musk, we now know that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, has been involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship.

In May 2022, the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry, along with the New Civil Liberties Alliance and a few individual plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden (Missouri v. Biden²), arguing the White House is engaged in illegal suppression of protected speech.

Two months earlier, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had also filed a class action lawsuit (Kennedy v. Biden et.al.³), but due to their similarities and overlap, Kennedy’s case has since been consolidated into Missouri v. Biden.⁴

Initially, the White House did not cooperate with discovery and fought to keep communications secret, claiming all White House communications as “privileged,” but September 7, 2022, Judge Terry Doughty rejected the government’s claim and ordered the White House to hand over any and all relevant records.⁵

Government Has Been Weaponized Against the People

Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House⁶ show at least 67^7,8 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies have been engaged in illegal censorship activities, including officials from:

The evidence show that government agencies and Big Tech companies held monthly Unified Strategies Group (USG) meetings at which topics to be censored and suppressed were discussed.

Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory.⁹ On the private industry side, notable tech participants in the censorship meetings have included:

A Win for Our Constitutional Rights

But there’s good news for a change. In early July 2023, Judge Doughty granted the plaintiffs’ injunction, prohibiting federal agencies and Biden administration officials from working with social media companies to limit protected speech.

The defendants appealed, but September 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s injunction banning the White House, surgeon general, CDC and FBI from influencing social media companies to remove so-called “disinformation.”¹⁰

According to the judge’s decision,¹¹ the White House and the surgeon general “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences” and “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes.”

The appellate court also found that the FBI had illegally coerced social media companies to remove content. “Given the record before us, we cannot say that the FBI’s messages were plainly threatening in tone or manner,” the judges wrote. But “we do find the FBI’s requests came with the backing of clear authority over the platforms.”

As for the CDC, the judges opined that “CDC officials provided direct guidance to the platforms on the application of the platforms’ internal policies and moderation activities” by telling them what was, and was not, misinformation, asking for changes to platforms’ moderation policies and directing platforms to take specific actions.

“Ultimately, the CDC’s guidance informed, if not directly affected, the platforms’ moderation decisions,” the judges said, so, “although not plainly coercive, the CDC officials likely significantly encouraged the platforms’ moderation decisions, meaning they violated the First Amendment.”

Appellate Court Left Door Open for Government Censorship

Unfortunately, the appellate court also reversed, vacated and modified other parts of the original injunction,¹² which leaves the door open for certain federal agencies to continue their censorship activities.

Importantly, the court excluded all federal officials and agencies from the original injunction with the exception of the White House, surgeon general’s office, the CDC and FBI.

Most disturbingly, officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are excluded from the injunction,¹³ and as discussed in previous articles, CISA appears to have played a major, if not central, role in the government’s censorship of Americans.

CISA is partnered with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), later renamed the Virality Project,¹⁴ and in an Atlantic Council interview, EIP head Alex Stamos openly admitted that the partnership was set up to outsource censorship that the government could not do due to “lack of legal authorization.”¹⁵

They’ve been coordinating the take-down of undesirable content using a real-time chat app that the DHS, EIP and social media companies all share.

The reason for the court’s decision to vacate the injunction against CISA is that “although CISA flagged content for social media platforms as part of its switchboarding operations … it’s conduct falls on the ‘attempts to convince,’ not ‘attempts to coerce,’ side of the line … There is not sufficient evidence that CISA made threats of adverse consequences … to the platforms for refusing to act on the content it flagged.”

However, CDC officials were also found to have used noncoercive methods, and made no threats of adverse consequences, yet they are still part of the injunction and were expressly found to have violated the First Amendment.

The CDC was deemed to have “encouraged” platforms’ decision-making processes. So, what’s the difference between “encouraging” and “attempting to convince” platforms to censor? Isn’t “attempting to convince” closer to coercion than merely encouraging censorship?

Unfortunately, by excluding CISA, government censorship could potentially continue via third parties like the EIP/Virality project and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), provided they don’t use threats of punishment or get directly involved in platform moderation of content.

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