(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – A federal judge has ordered top federal government officials – including White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre – to make public documents on the government’s censorship of social media platforms.
Judge Terry A. Doughty ruled in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana against the executive privilege claims of the Biden administration, The Washington Times reported.
“This court believes plaintiffs are entitled to external communications by Jean-Pierre and Dr. Fauci in their capacities as White House Press Secretary and Chief Medical Advisor to the President to third-party social media platforms,” the judge wrote in his order.
Judge Doughty gave Fauci, Jean-Pierre, and other federal officials three weeks to comply with his order and reveal the respective government records as they answer questions posed by the Republican Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana, Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry.
Last week, Schmitt and Landry revealed in a letter to the Department of Justice that they had obtained federal papers showing that officials from a total of eleven federal bodies systematically colluded with major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor information from the American public.
The institutions in question included the Health Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
The lawsuit, which is now forcing Fauci and Jean-Pierre to give answers, was filed by the Missouri and Louisiana AGs under the First Amendment in May.
Since then, Schmitt and Landry have been working with a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan nonprofit, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), to dig up more details about the administration’s censorship collaboration with Facebook and Twitter.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Doughty allowed more people to be included in the lawsuit. However, he declined a request to force federal officials to reveal others who have been collaborating with social media platforms on censorship efforts.
“We know from the previous round of discovery that efforts to censor the speech of those who disagree with the government on COVID policy have come from the top,” Jenin Younes, NCLA litigation counsel, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Schmitt posted on Twitter a leaked July 2021 email in which Clarke Humphrey, a White House COVID-19 response digital director, asked Facebook executives to take down a parody of Anthony Fauci’s account on Instagram named “anthonyfauciofficial.”
“Any way we can get this pulled down? It is not actually one of ours,” Clarke wrote.
“Yep, on it!” responded a Facebook employee whose name was redacted and not revealed.
Judge orders Biden admin to hand over any censorship records, rejects executive privilege claimhttps://t.co/LPtxuGPKvZ pic.twitter.com/rvu5KHURfX
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) September 7, 2022
