The government appealed the ruling of the 5th Circuit Federal Appellate Court, which found that the federal government had engaged in an enormous campaign of censorship against Americans, to the Supreme Court in the Missouri v. Biden case. The Supreme Court recently announced that it will hear oral arguments in the case on March 18. TGP Publisher Jim Hoft is the lead Plaintiff.
Today, The Gateway Pundit and the pro-free speech side has filed its “Brief of Respondents” before the Court outlining their arguments.
The respondents include: Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Jill Hines and Jim Hoft.
Jim Hoft from The Gateway Pundit is the lead plaintiff in the case.
You can exclusively read the filing here, before it has been posted anywhere else.
At issue in the case is fundamentally whether the government, via the FBI and Intelligence Community, can demand that social media companies delete specific comments, topics, and people, from their platforms.
It has repeatedly emerged that the government was not just interested in suppressing false information, but was also actively suppressing what they knew was truthful information.
The claim that this case is about ‘combatting misinformation’ or ‘stopping the spread of disinformation’ is false. This case involves the ability of the government to control the existence and flow of what they knew was truthful information.
What the legal discovery process has revealed in this case is that the federal government in the wake of the COVID plandemic set up a free-speech-suppression industrial complex. Not only could the White House, FBI, and literally dozens of other federal officials and agencies complain about one supposed bit of so-called ‘disinformation’ on a social media platform, but they had, instead, set up an automated system to suppress the thoughts, words, arguments, expressions, comments, of millions of Americans. The discovery process has revealed a massive speech suppression system.
Multiple outlets have correctly noted that this case represents the most important free speech court case in a generation. They note that if the government has the right to suppress entire topics from online discourse, then what won’t the government be able to do when suppressing news and views of those the elites in power dislike?
The opening paragraph of the Respondents’ brief identifies the stakes at issue in this case:
This Court “has rarely,” if ever, “faced … a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life.” J.A.70-71. The federal Petitioners (“Defendants”) “have engaged in a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social-media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government.” J.A.82. “The harms that radiate from such conduct extend far beyond just the Plaintiffs,” and they “impact[] every social-media user.” J.A.82. Defendants’ conduct fundamentally transforms online discourse and renders entire viewpoints on great social and political questions virtually unspeakable on social media, “the modern public square.”
The federal government set up a wide array of “disinformation offices” in many federal departments in order to prosecute these petty speech suppressions. These offices were the ones tasked with watching social media platforms to demand that individual users and comments and topics be suppressed. The Biden Administration has designated thoughts and ideas as part of the nation’s ‘critical infrastructure’ allowing this censorship regime to grow.
These speech suppressions were not on obscure topics or lightly used, the government deleted, deplatformed, suppressed, and banned major current political topics, went after both prominent and obscure individuals, and were working hand-in-hand with third party left-wing non-profits and activist groups.
In just one request for takedowns, the FBI demanded Twitter delete 929,000 tweets they claimed were ‘foreign’ speech they disliked.
In another instance, the FBI demanded the deletion of a pro-Second Amendment post ‘liked’ by nearly 100,000 users on Facebook.
The government tried to create a ‘real-time’ monitoring and flagging of content it disliked which, at its height, was flagging 2.5% of all Tweets on Twitter as ‘potential misinformation.’
The government is even specifically identified as targeting The Gateway Pundit for censorship. The brief states, “Defendants even appear to be currently involved in an ongoing project that encourages and engages in censorship activities specifically targeting Hoft’s [The Gateway Pundit] website.”
Claiming it was the result of ‘hacked’ materials, the government demanded the deletion of comments and stories about the President’s degenerate son Hunter Biden’s laptop which featured evidence of illegal weapons possession, drug use, sex with prostitutes, and a wide variety of financial crimes as well as peculiarities such as Hunter labelling his President father in his phone as “Pedo Peter.”
The primary topics of government concern for suppression were: COVID, Vaccines, Election Integrity. The brief notes that the censorship regime has now expanded its topic list to include: climate change, gender discussions, abortion, economic policy, the origins of the COVID plandemic, the efficacy of vaccines, racial justice, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the support of the United States for Ukraine in the Ukrainian-Russian war.
Facebook and Twitter even gently pushed back on the government’s demands, only to be threatened, told they were “killing people” and “spreading poison” and a variety of veiled threats used to enforce compliance. At other points, government agents threatened to use anti-trust enforcement against the social media companies unless they complied. Eventually the social media companies engaged in what the brief describes as “total compliance” with the federal government.
In their communications, White House officials repeatedly stressed that they were “on the same team” as the people they were communicating with at the social media companies.
One prominent example of the type of speech suppression involved the White House demanding Twitter delete a post by noted vaccine skeptic and Presidential candidate RFK, Jr.:
At 1:04 a.m. on January 23, 2021, the White House flagged an anti-vaccine tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (“RFK Jr.”) and instructed Twitter to “get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.” J.A.637. “And then,” the White House added, “if we can keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same ~genre that would be great.”
The dishonest mainstream media has falsely portrayed this case as representing the government’s ‘ability to communicate’ with social media companies. The reporting very plainly avoids mentioning the 1) coercion and demands by the government, 2) that it was seeking to suppress truthful information, 3) the scale and scope of the content suppressed.
Reuters avoids the coercive language used by the Administration: “A court order restricting the ability of President Joe Biden’s administration to encourage social media companies to remove content…”
New York Times avoids the fact the White House was demanding truthful information be suppressed: “…the surgeon general’s top aide repeatedly urged Google, Facebook and Twitter to do more to combat disinformation.”
Bloomberg dishonestly avoided the coercive aspects of the case and said that the case was about “pushing social media companies to moderate content on their websites.”
MSNBC opined and lied by saying the case was about “Biden administration must cease contacting social media companies” about “misinformation.”
The Respondents, The Gateway Pundit and the pro-free speech side, are:
- the State of Missouri;
- the State of Louisiana;
- Dr. Aaron Kheriaty;
- Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
- Gateway Pundit Publisher Jim Hoft;
- Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya;
- and Jill Hines
The Petitioners, representing the anti-free speech government side, are:
- Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy
- Chief Engagement Officer for the Surgeon General, Katharine Dealy,
- Directors, administrators and employees of the Surgeon General;
- White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre;
- Counsel to the President, Edward N. Siskel;
- White House Partnerships Manager, Aisha Shah;
- Special Assistant to the President, Sarah Beran;
- Administrator of the United States Digital Service within the Office of Management and Budget, Mina Hsiang;
- White House National Climate Advisor, Ali Zaidi;
- White House Senior COVID-19 Advisor, formerly Andrew Slavitt;
- Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy, formerly Rob Flaherty;
- White House COVID-19 Director of Strategic Communications and Engagement, Dori Salcido;
- White House Digital Director for the COVID19 Response Team, formerly Clarke Humphrey;
- Deputy Director of Strategic Communications and Engagement of the White House COVID19 Response Team, formerly Benjamin Wakana;
- Deputy Director for Strategic Communications and External Engagement for the White House COVID-19 Response Team, formerly Subhan Cheema;
- White House COVID-19 Supply Coordinator, formerly Timothy W. Manning;
- Chief Medical Advisor to the President, formerly Dr. Anthony S. Fauci;
- The Directors, administrators and employees of the Chief Medical Advisor to the President;
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC);
- CDC Employee Carol Y. Crawford, Chief of the Digital Media Branch of the CDC Division of Public Affairs;
- CDC Employee Jay Dempsey, Social-Media Team Leader, Digital Media Branch, CDC Division of Public Affairs;
- CDC Employee Kate Galatas, CDC Deputy Communications Director;
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);
- FBI Section Chief, FBI Foreign Influence Task Force, formerly Laura Dehmlow;
- FBI Agent Elvis M. Chan, Supervisory Special Agent of Squad CY-1 in the FBI San Francisco Division.
Because the federal Appellate 5th Circuit granted injunctive relief against some, but not all, of the Defendants in the underlying case on pause at the trial court level in Western Louisiana, the following are still anti-free speech Defendants in the case but not Petitioners in the current action before the Supreme Court:
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS);
- The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);
- Xavier Becerra, Secretary of HHS;
- Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, Director of NIAID;
- Yolanda Byrd, HHS Digital Engagement Team;
- Christy Choi, HHS Office of Communications;
- Ashley Morse, HHS Director of Digital Engagement;
- Joshua Peck, HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary, Deputy Digital Director of HHS (formerly Janell Muhammed);
- HHS secretaries, directors, administrators, and employees;
- United States Census Bureau;
- Jennifer Shopkorn, Census Bureau Senior Advisor for Communications, Division Chief for the Communications Directorate, and Deputy Director of the Census Bureau Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships,
- United States Census Bureau secretaries, directors, administrators and employees;
- The United States Department of Justice, along with its secretary, director, administrators, and employees;
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA);
- Jen Easterly, Director of CISA;
- Kim Wyman, Senior Cybersecurity Advisor, CISA;
- CISA Senior Election Security Leader, Lauren Protentis;
- Geoffrey Hale; Allison Snell; Brian Scully, officials of CISA;
- The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS);
- Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS);
- Robert Silvers, Under-Secretary of the Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans;
- Samantha Vinograd, Senior Counselor for National Security in the Office of the Secretary for DHS;
- DHS secretaries, directors, administrators, and employees;
- the United States Department of State (State Department);
- Leah Bray, Acting Coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC);
- Alexis Frisbie, State Department Senior Technical Advisor and Member of the Technology Engagement Team at the GEC;
- Daniel Kimmage, Acting Coordinator of the GEC;
- GEC secretaries, directors, administrators, and employees.
And the following individuals are still anti-free speech Defendants in the underlying case, now on pause, at the trial court in the federal Western District of Louisiana, but the trial court did not enter an injunction against them while an appeal was pending:
- Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States;
- The Food and Drug Administration;
- The Department of the Treasury;
- The Department of Commerce;
- Erica Jefferson;
- Michael Murray;
- Wally Adeyamo;
- Steven Frid;
- Brad Kimberly;
- Kristen Muthig;
- The Disinformation Governance Board;
- Nina Jankowicz.
The Roberts Court has generally been protective and assertive of the free speech rights of Americans, though in this case the Supreme Court has allowed the government to continue censoring Americans as it awaits a hearing and decision. The case number before the Supreme Court is 23-411, and is styled as Murthy v. Missouri. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 18, and the Court will likely rule on the case in the late June or early July timeframe.
The government has repeatedly begged the courts to let it continue censoring Americans. The government has litigated every step of the way, ensuring the suing parties were not able to depose former Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki, for example.
Last March Congress held hearings to investigate the factual matters in the Missouri v. Biden case. At the hearings, pro-free speech attorney John Sauer, an attorney involved in the case, testified that the FBI was making at least 5-8 takedown requests to social media companies every month, and that a wide array of FBI officials were engaged in policing thoughts and comments. Sauer noted that at least 20 individuals working within the White House were sending takedown requests to social media companies as well.
The Gateway Pundit and the other Pro-Free Speech Respondents are asking the Supreme Court to affirm the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in this case, and the anti-Free Speech government Petitioners are asking the Court to overrule the Fifth Circuit’s prior ruling.
A wide variety of pro-free speech groups have filed amicus briefs in support of the pro-free speech Respondents in this case.
TGP Publisher Jim Hoft discussed the Missouri v. Biden case two days ago in a podcast.
