Biden team worked with social media companies’ censorship acts, records show

Conservative litigators said Thursday they have unearthed the Biden administration’s sprawling effort to censor and suppress content online, revealed through the private communications of dozens of government officials with social-media companies.

Missouri and Louisiana’s attorneys general and the conservative litigation group New Civil Liberties Alliance made details of the communications public in a dispute over records the federal government is withholding.

Thus far, the lawyers said the federal officials engaged in a “Censorship Enterprise” spanning 11 different federal agencies.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said the Justice Department refused to produce communications between its officials and social media companies so the lawyers filed a petition with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to compel the government to produce documents.

“We have already received a number of documents that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we’re not done,” Mr. Schmitt said in a statement.

“The Department of Justice is cowering behind executive privilege and has refused to turn over communications between the highest-ranking Biden administration officials and social media companies,” he added.

Mr. Schmitt published some of the records on Twitter. One example shows a White House official asking Facebook employees to take down the Instagram account “anthonyfauciofficial,” which Mr. Schmitt said was a parody of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“Any way we can get this pulled down?” wrote Clarke Humphrey, COVID-19 response digital director at the White House, last July. “It is not actually one of ours.”

“Yep, on it!” replied a Facebook official whose name is redacted.  

Mr. Schmitt said other emails show the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reaching out to Google, Facebook’s parent company Meta, Microsoft and Twitter following the roll-out of the Disinformation Governance Board, which was later paused amid public outcry.

Mr. Schmitt’s joint declaration submitted Wednesday with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and supported by lawyers from the New Civil Liberties Alliance details the extensive nature of the government’s work with the tech platforms.

“Meta, for example, has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials — including senior officials at the [Food and Drug Administration], the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House — have communicated with Meta about content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to plaintiffs’ interrogatories to defendants,” the joint declaration said.

“YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including officials at the Census Bureau and the White House, many of whom were also not disclosed by defendants,” it added.

NCLA litigation counsel Jenin Younes said the federal government has fought at every step to keep its actions hidden.

“If there was ever any doubt the federal government was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official COVID messaging, that doubt has been erased,” Ms. Younes said in a statement. “The shocking extent of the government’s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing social media companies, has now been revealed.”