MONROE, Louisiana – U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who on the Fourth of July enjoined censorship of social media by Joe Biden’s administration, found the government censored a St. Louis native and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. three days after Biden took the oath of office.
Kennedy, son of an attorney general whose name graces the headquarters of the Department of Justice, currently seeks the Democratic nomination for president.
Biden’s censors nicknamed Kennedy and 11 others as the disinformation dozen.
The dozen included Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit in St. Louis, a plaintiff in Doughty’s court who had about 1.3 million followers before his suspension from social media.
He found social media companies agreed to censor speech under coercion.
He added that they censored speech that didn’t violate their own standards, and they never checked for possible truth in the statements they censored.
Doughty wrote that the issue before him was not whether platforms acted as government but whether government could be held responsible for decisions of the platforms.
He found government can’t grant a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable but deny it to those expressing less favored or more controversial views.
He added that government can’t prohibit expression of an idea simply because society finds it offensive or disagreeable.
Doughty found government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
He found comments of an official could give rise to a First Amendment claim if they intimate that punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow failure to accede to a request.
He added that virtually all the suppressed speech was conservative, indicating that defendants engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
Doughty found differing views about vaccines, masks, closing of schools and businesses, and a host of other topics were suppressed.
“Each United States citizen has the right to decide for himself or herself what is true and what is false,” he wrote.
He found extensive examples of suppression from limited discovery suggested they were a representative sample of more extensive suppressions inflicted on speakers and audiences.
He found Louisiana’s attorney general faced direct censorship for sharing video of citizens criticizing the lockdown and masks on YouTube.
He also found YouTube censored videos of four public meetings in St. Louis County, Missouri, because citizens expressed a view that masks were ineffective.
“The public interest is served by maintaining the constitutional right that is vital to the freedom of our nation,” he wrote.
“Plaintiffs have produced evidence of a massive effort by defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content,” he added.
He denied certification of a class action, finding the class would be too broad to even begin to fathom who would fit into it.
Defendants filed an appeal notice and asked Doughty to stay enforcement of the injunction.
They claimed they can’t comply because they don’t know what free speech means.
He modified his order to state they could find the meaning in jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court.
Censorship
Government pressure became unbearable in July 2021, when Biden complained about messages on social media and said, “They’re killing people.”
Social media executives promised to increase censorship, and the White House argued that Biden meant the disinformation dozen, not social media, were killing people.
Doughty found plaintiffs would likely experience future censorship without an injunction.
“Defendants apparently continue to have meetings with social media companies and other contacts,” he wrote.
“Defendants even appear to be currently involved in an ongoing project that encourages and engages in censorship activities specifically targeting Hoft’s website,” he added.
Doughty found it isn’t imaginary to believe that in the event of any real or perceived emergency, defendants would use their power over social media again to suppress alternative views.
“It is certainly not imaginary or speculative to predict that defendants could use their power over millions of people to suppress alternative views or moderate content they do not agree with in the upcoming 2024 election,” he wrote.
Louisiana and Missouri filed the suit last year along with Hoft, physicians Aaron Kheriaty, Martin Kulldorff, and Jayanta Bhattacharya, and nurse Jill Hines.
They named Biden as first defendant along with 40 other individuals and 14 agencies.
They moved for an injunction, and Doughty held a hearing on May 23.
Doughty's order opened with a declaration that the principal function of free speech in the United States is to invite dispute.
“It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger,” he wrote.
Doughty found virus response team member Clarke Humphrey asked Twitter to remove a Kennedy tweet against vaccination on Jan. 23, 2021.
Defendant Rob Flaherty, a virus advisor, accused Facebook of causing political violence on Feb. 9, 2021.
Facebook responded that it would reduce distribution, add warnings, and depend on public health authorities to determine its policies.
Flaherty met with Twitter on March 1, 2021, and Twitter assured the White House that it would increase censorship of misleading information.
Flaherty accused Facebook of driving vaccine hesitancy on March 15, 2021.
“This would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us,” Flaherty wrote.
Doughty wrote that Facebook and Flaherty met on March 19, 2021; and two days later, Facebook stated it would censor, remove, and reduce the virality of content discouraging vaccination.
Flaherty met with YouTube on April 21, 2021, and sent a message the next day that the White House was concerned about intensifying vaccine hesitancy.
Flaherty sent Facebook a brief on April 23, 2021, stating Facebook played a major role in the spread of vaccine misinformation.
On May 5, 2021, Biden press secretary Jen Psaki allegedly threatened legal consequences and a robust antitrust program for the major platforms.
Carol Crawford of Centers for Disease Control sent 16 postings of misinformation to Facebook on May 6, 2021, and 12 more on May 19.
“Facebook began to rely on Crawford and the CDC to determine whether claims were true or false,” Doughty wrote.
On July 15, 2021, surgeon general Vivek Murthy told reporters, “We expect more from our technology companies.”
On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Biden for his message to social media, and he said, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and that they’re killing people.”
Facebook sent a message to the White House on July 17, 2021, asking to get back into good graces and stating they were 100% on the same team.
Doughty wrote that a Facebook executive sent Murthy a message on July 18, 2021, stating it wasn’t great to be accused of killing people, but he was keen to find a way to deescalate.
On July 20, 2021, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the White House would announce whether platforms are legally liable for misinformation.
She said the White House would examine the Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from responsibility for posts of third parties.
Doughty found the public and private pressure had its intended effect.
“All twelve members of the Disinformation Dozen were censored and pages, groups, and accounts linked to the Disinformation Dozen were removed,” he wrote.
He found the White House also asked for censorship regarding climate change, gender, abortion, and economic policy.
Doughty separately reviewed claims that in 2020, Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control practiced censorship of theories that the virus leaked from a laboratory.
Plaintiffs claimed that on Feb. 1, 2020, Fauci convinced proponents of the theory to change their minds and advocate for natural origin.
On March 17, 2020, Nature Medicine published a report concluding that the virus occurred naturally.
Authors sent numerous drafts of the report to Fauci prior to publication.
Three of the authors had received grants from National Institutes for Health.
Plaintiffs Kulldorff and Bhattacharya published a “Great Barrington Declaration” on Oct. 4, 2020, criticizing the physical and mental impacts of the lockdown.
A colleague of Anthony Fauci recommended a “quick and devastating take down,” and Fauci organized a campaign to discredit the declaration.
On Oct. 15, 2020, the Washington Post quoted Fauci’s colleague Francis Collins, stating authors of the declaration were fringe and dangerous.
Doughty found Google diverted users from the declaration to articles critical of it, and both Reddit and Facebook removed it.
Fauci testified that he changed his position on masks partly because evidence began accumulating that they prevented acquisition and transmission.
However, Doughty wrote that Fauci couldn’t identify any such studies.
Doughty also reviewed claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency censored speech.
He found the agency started meeting with social media companies in 2017, and they held a meeting about the 2020 election in 2019.
Doughty also wrote that the FBI received Hunter Biden’s laptop on Dec. 9, 2019, and refused to comment when the New York Post broke the story on Oct. 14, 2020.
Facebook and Twitter censored the Post story, and Twitter blocked users from sharing links to it.
Doughty found that at least eight FBI agents in San Francisco report disinformation to social media.
Twitter took down 3,613 accounts for the FBI in 2018, and Facebook took down 825.