[ Sound Effects ] Stand by, while NCLA cuts through the noise [ Sound Effects ] to signal abuse of administrative power. [ Sound Effects ] This is Administrative Static with Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione. [ Sound Effects ] Welcome to Administrative Static. This is John Vecchione and I'm here with Mark Chenoweth. And our first topic for today is one that I think is very exciting, very interesting, both factually and as a legal matter. And that's the case in Missouri v. Biden, where NCLA represents private plaintiffs, the states of Missouri and Louisiana are suing the federal government over interference and censorship of social media. And our clients are individuals who have been censored by that social media because of government action. And this week, we filed a supplementary motion for preliminary injunction. And those of you who followed the program, we moved a while ago for preliminary injunction, but we needed some discovery so that the judge could make a decision on whether or not the various tests, which I'll talk about, had been met. And this week, a massive, massive filing, which you can find most of it on our website, but not all of it. There are so many attachments that some of them aren't even up yet. John told me it's a Russian novel. It is. But it is fascinating, particularly the statement of facts. The brief is good too, but the statement of facts, which then statement of facts in this type of thing have to be backed up by affidavit, so many of the attachments are the affidavits, supporting the paragraphs. But I want to read to you just a Russian novel with a dinda? Exactly, and a, and a, a, a, a, both contents. But here, so, so here is the beginning of the, of the supplementary motion that I think it describes this case accurately. This case involves some of the most egregious First Amendment violations in American history. Federal officials from the White House and multiple agencies use pressure, threats, coercion, concholing, collusion, demands, and trickery and deceit to induce social media platforms to censor speakers and viewpoints on social media that the federal officials disfavor. The proof of this sprawling federal censorship enterprise is voluminous and overwhelming. And we call this cross agency effort at all levels of government the censorship enterprise. And then give you some idea of the size of it. Plan of summarize key points of the evidence in 1442 numbered paragraphs with specific citations, the record for each point. And, and it goes on to say White House officials like Rob Flaherty, Andrew Slavitt, and Jennifer Sackie have engaged in a relentless pressure campaign, both in public and in private, to coerce platforms into censoring disfavored viewpoints on social media. Third in general, Vivek Murthy and his staff coordinate closely with the White House and this pressure campaign, causing social media platforms to scramble and assure federal officials that, quote, "We hear your call to do more to censor disfavored viewpoints." The CDC flags specific social media posts for censorship organizations with photos beyond the lookout meetings to tell platforms what should be censored and serve as the ultimate back checker with final authority to dictate what speech will be removed from social media. Dr. Fauci orchestrated an elaborate campaign of trickery and deception to ensure that the media's perception to induce social media platforms to censor the lab leak theory and other viewpoints he disfavors. The FBI, likewise, deliberately planted false information about hack-and-leak operations to deceive social media platforms into censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. The FBI, SISA, and the GEC collude with social media platforms in hundreds of meetings about misinformation and those agencies repeatedly flag huge quantities of First Amendment and protected speech to platforms for censorship. So that's just gives you a flavor of the size of this. That's just the beginning of it. And as I said, you can go to the NCLA website and read this. Gives me an suggestion already. But all together, these censorship activities by federal officials and agencies constitute a gargantuan federal censorship enterprise. This enterprise is highly effective. It is stifled debate and criticism of governmental policy on social media, but some of the most pressing issues of our time. And its activities are flagrantly unconstitutional. Fortune enter preliminary injunction, putting a stop to these egregious violations of the First Amendment. So that encapsulates the motion. And I want to guess some of you remember what a preliminary injunction does here is we're asking him to stop doing this pressure and these illegal flagging of the social media platforms to take off true, true things from as the facts will show. So the first thing you have to show is that you're likely to succeed on the merits. So the brief goes through and the facts show how this was not done by the platforms, by the social media on its own. It was forced to do so or threatened. One of the big threats is Section 230, which we've heard a lot of talk about, but they said basically we'll take away your Section 230 protections so that you can be sued for libel and all kinds of things unless you do our bidding. So there was that, there's antitrust, there were a lot of government threats of action against them. So they are actually instrumentalities of the federal government. And then there are other things. The government's not allowed to induce you to do something voluntarily if it couldn't make you do those things under the Constitution. So the next was plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the First Amendment claim because there's inducement, significant encouragement, coercion and deception to get them to change their activities. And then the facts are just relentless, significant encouragement, coercion and deception. And there's just paragraph to paragraph of everything they did in bullying, particularly Rob Flaherty, he likes to use vowel language and call these people all kinds of names. I think he might think that he is in the, who was the mayor of Chicago? Daily? No, after Daily, you spoke in Clinton White House. Anyway, it'll come to me. Oh yeah. So I think he thinks he said that. Rahm Emanuel. He thinks he's a Rahm Emanuel type, I think. But anyway, then joint participation, conclusion and pervasive entwined. I was shocked. I mean, I was literally shocked by how often the government was meeting with Facebook and Twitter when I got into this case. And when we were taking, I took the definition of the CDC, the head of the social media interaction at CDC, it's incredible how many meetings they have and how much contact they have with these social media. It's not like, oh gee, someone's saying that the vaccine is filled with nanobots. Could you take a look at that? And then once a month or twice a month doing things like that, saying, hey, you really want this on your platform? Nah, it's every day. Boom, boom, boom, stop this. Don't do that. Do this. And then the argument is, then it's censorship activities violate the First Amendment and we think they do. They say, yeah, we're just giving suggestions. And then we have that plans are likely to succeed on their Administrative Procedure Act and Ultra-Virus claims. And finally, plans are likely to establish standing. As you know, in many of these cases, standing is a big issue. I believe the states have standing and they've gone through chapter and verse. One of the part of the factual findings is their standing claims, but our clients and also Jim Hoff Gateway Pundit is another he's represented by someone else. But they were kept off their platforms that the government's behest. Twitter files have shown that JBatt Bhattacharya was was was a deplatform like push throttle and and by the way, Twitter didn't produce that to us, right? So we're asking for this stuff. Oh, I don't know. And then Matt Teabe, who's actually testifying to Congress today, he found all this stuff out and we and we we've used some of it. But the real thing here is is that so that's real harm. All the individual plaintiffs and the states have have real harm here. And I love the term throttle because it sounds like real harm. It does. And if you tell someone, typically you you can be charged with that. That's exactly right. And and so I think that that the the motion is very well taken. It's called a supplement because they started this a while ago, but we've got so much more information and the facts took so long to put together. The government's now asking for extension time to respond to it because it's so vast. But it's because of how much they did. The thing would be real short if we didn't have the goods, right? Because why do they need extra time? They already knew they did all this stuff. But the fact is if if if they hadn't done it this pervasive all over the government pushing of all of these companies and I want to the post findings of fact, it's like this the summary of all the bad things they did is in this proposed findings of fact, which is exhibit one to the to the motion, the supplemental motion that you can see on our website. And by the way, the other things that are go up, they we've submitted all the depositions we took on video tape to the court so it can judge the demeanor of people like Fauci and Dislavitz and and. Clarity. Jim, Jim Psaki. Couldn't get her. We want that seeing her enough on tape to know she'd be a basic. Exactly. So what we did get. She's going to circle back to that, Jim. But we did get. So he ordered her deposition to be taken. But but the Fifth Circuit said she was too high and official, too close to the president and we had to use other means. So we use written interrogatories. But I do think that the factual document is something people should also look and just skim through and see what was going on here. The plaintiff's proposed finding of fact was on for many paragraphs and some for standing. You probably don't want to see, but what the government was doing to keep people off Twitter and Facebook and the other platforms is going to be of interest. And when we come back, I'll go through some of those facts, but I think that they're damning and I think that the the sheer volume of them is going to turn the tide here because this just cannot go on. We'll be right back. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Welcome back to administrative static. We were discussing the plaintiff's supplemental briefing for preliminary injunction in Missouri if you buy them before the break. And I was about to get some of the facts because the proposed finding of facts, I think are very compelling. And I don't, the government's view is going to be, well, we were just giving suggestions and the sheer volume and the nature of that these suggestions took, which were threats is going to, I think, I think they've got a very tough row to hope. But I want to just highlight little portions of this, of this vast document, but I think they're interesting. And it's, it starts the campaign of public threats against social media platforms to pressure them to censor more speech on social media. Federal officials, including defendants, have made a long series of public statements since at least 2018. So this is not just the current administration. They started censoring social media in the last administration demanding that social media platforms increase their censorship of speech and speakers disfavored by these officials and threatening adverse consequences, such as repeal of section 230 immunity under the Communications Decency Act, anti-trust scrutiny or enforcement, increased regulation and other measures if the platforms did not increase censorship. The communications between government officials and social media platforms, addressing disinformation, misinformation and censorship set forth herein were made against the backdrop of these public threats. So this is to show, look, you've got the threats on the one hand and then you've got the requests for censorship over here. Now they may not always put them together, but the social media platforms put them together pretty darn quick. And this is, and we have facts to back this up and people have testified to it, but I won't read the sites, but the immunity provided by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is extremely valuable for social media platforms. So threatening to amend or repeal that immunity is highly motivating to them. One commentator has aptly described section 230 immunity as, quote, "a hidden subsidy worth billions of dollars," stating, quote, "digital platforms enjoy a hidden subsidy worth billions of dollars by being exempted from any liability from most of the speech on their platforms." Is that a name commentator, Philip Hemberg? It is not, but it is true. I don't believe he disagreed. Another commentator has observed in paralling section 230 as a fearsome cudgel against ever untouchable companies. So when we have the declaration about all that, and it's true, if you know anything about 230 and about liability, you don't want to have an unencoate bunch of suits that could come against you at any time because you don't even always know who's on your platform saying what. But any event, the threat of antitrust scrutiny or enforcement is also a major motivator to social media platforms. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that the threat of antitrust enforcement is, quote, "an existential threat," unquote, to his platform. So I think Zuckerberg knows what motivates him, and he said what motivates him, and he's been very consistent about what motivates him. He didn't get to be one of the richest guys in the world because he didn't take threats like this seriously. And so then after showing what the threat is, then show the facts, then go through all the elected officials pressuring platforms to censor speech. And it starts out with the legislature and the various people in the legislature pressuring them, which I won't go through here because I think that this wasn't a government-wide atmosphere, but the real point of spear on this was White House and administrative officials. And Rob Flaherty, who's a White House aide, was with Facebook. And paragraph 112 of this is one of the things that gets me because although the government shouldn't be able to censor you in any way, shape, or form, what is absolutely galling to me is how many true things they're getting taken away or arguably true things. There's one thing to want to, like I said, about the nanobots in the vaccine. I think you're allowed to say that, but I'm not going to spend a lot of my time defending that. But there are a lot of things that are opinion and true things that they're taking off because they can. It's unbelievable. Yeah, like natural immunity. Like natural immunity. And then as with Facebook, many of Flaherty's demands related to so-called "borderline" content, often truthful content that does not violate platform policies, but that the White House disfavors. Among other things, he praised YouTube for reducing distribution of such content. "I believe you said you reduced watch time by 70% on the borderline content, which is impressive." Or as Darth Vader would say, "most impressive." But then again-- No, I think Darth Vader would still be disappointed. But then-- Don't disappoint me again. But then again, he followed up with a long series of demands for more information. Like Darth, how does that track with vaccine-related content specifically? What has the comparative reduction in watch time on borderline vaccine topics been after your interventions? And what has the increase in watch time been on authoritative information, meaning is related to the second bullet? To what extent have your ranking interventions been effective here? Perhaps more critically, to what degree is content from people who have been given quote, "a strike still being recommended and shown in prominent search positions?" So-- So the God of Strike against them doesn't mean anything after that they've said is bad. How did you arrive on info panels as the best intervention? And to what extent are people clicking through after exposure to vaccine-hesitant content? What are the general vectors by which people see the borderline content or really just vaccine-skeptical content? Is largely through recommendation search. And he just would always imply that YouTube should be censoring more content from disfavored speakers, those who have been given a strike for previous anti-vaccine content. And so you see that he's going after speakers oftentimes, not just what they were saying. And then paragraph 113, "I flarity emphasized the White House wanted to make sure YouTube's work extends to the broader problem of people viewing vaccine hesitant content. And you can't imagine what they consider vaccine hesitant. I've used it before. If you bring up the actual side effects that the vaccine companies have to buy law put on the label, if you show that label, he considers it vaccine hesitancy." And he proposed regular meetings to push YouTube to disclose its internal data to the White House. We've worked with a number of platform partners to track down similar information based on internal data, including partners of similar scale. I'm feeling a bit like I don't have a full sense of the picture here. We speak with other platforms on a semi-regular basis. We'd love to get in this habit with you, perhaps biweekly, looking forward to more conversation because who doesn't want to talk to the government every week? And so this is what I'm talking about. It's constant. It's all the time. And he does this with YouTube. He does it with Facebook. It's like a big deal. But this is something I want to highlight before we run out of time. And something I think was an important factor, certainly, at Facebook. Paragraph 116, on May 1, 2021, Nick Clegg of Facebook sent an email to Andy Slavitt, another White House aide, indicating that the White House had recently met with Facebook, quote, "to share research work and make more demands," stating, quote, "Thanks to your team for sharing the research work with us." At the beginning of the email, Clegg apologized to the White House for not catching and censoring three pieces of vaccine content that went viral, even though the content did not violate Facebook's policies and promising to censor such non-violet of content more aggressively in the future, quote, "I wanted to send you a quick note on three pieces of vaccine content that was seen by a high number of people before we demoted them." Although they-- Is this his accent? Yeah. He's saying I'm just coming up. Oh, okay. Although they don't violate our community standards, we should have demoted them before they went viral. And this has exposed gaps in our operational technical processes. And this is a process. So Nick Clegg was a finance minister for Britain. He was a big ranking guy in Britain, I remember. And I am of the opinion that because he was a minister of Britain who has a completely different outlook to government censorship of language, they don't have a First Amendment there. They have a background of free speech, but it's nothing like us. The government thinks nothing of doing this with big companies in Britain and all of the commonwealth countries. And so I think that just having that guy in charge of this was a disaster for free speech. Well, they have much stronger rules on libel and slander too. That's true. So the White House had commanded Facebook, quote, "Do not distribute or amplify vaccine hesitancy." And Facebook should end group recommendation for groups with a history of COVID or vaccine misinformation. And this included groups of moms whose kids had had adverse reactions to the vaccines and they wanted to talk to each other. Ah, you're out. You can't do that. So John, it included people who had volunteered for the vaccine trials and were admitted to have been injured in the vaccine trials by the pharmaceutical company. Right. And they weren't allowed to be in Facebook or Twitter. Right. Pfizer would say these are some of the adverse events. They put it on their label. They'd say that these people were part of the thing. Pfizer wasn't lying about it, but you couldn't say it. Right. It's incredible. It's unbelievable. And so I just think that it's that this whole factual thing. The other thing is it is very clear that President Biden and some others saying that the social meter platforms are killing people by allowing information. They're killing people. And this goes to the whole idea. I just saw Chris Rock as a new special out. And he says, don't quote it. Well, I didn't curse. He didn't curse. He just said, he said, and obviously it's Chris Rock. He's famous or something at the Oscars. And he said, anyone who says words are hurtful has never been hit in the face. And I do think that that's the case here because they're saying that these social media platforms are killing people. Well, they're not killing people, but all of them were sensitive to this because they're all run by people who haven't been hit in the face. Yeah, there's no question. I just cannot imagine any of them have, but what I really think is that they want to be thought well of by the government. They run in those circles. They don't want to have the president saying they're killing people. Yeah, they don't want to get disinvited from the cocktail. Right. It's that it's all the rest of it. And really just as a general matter, I mean, 20 years ago, the president said you were killing people you were probably like you just had a chemical leak or something, right? You know, it was something if the president of the United States said such a thing. It was because you were poisoning the air or water or something. Not, uh, we don't talk. So I think this is going to be big and I will literally go take a look. We'll be back. [Music]
