Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is attempting to hold the Biden administration accountable for alleged collusion between the government and Big Tech to censor Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 election season, calling it “the worst First Amendment violation in this nation’s history.”
Bailey discussed developments in his lawsuit against the Biden administration on the show “Washington Watch” with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. The attorney general noted that he has solid evidence of one-sided censorship that occurred before the lawsuit, but he also said that the censorship has actually increased since the litigation began.
“[T]wenty thousand documents have been turned over in discovery, we’ve taken numerous depositions, and we’ve uncovered this vast censorship enterprise emanating across the federal government,” Bailey told Perkins. “My fear is that censorship enterprise has actually grown since we initiated this lawsuit.”
Bailey noted that the Biden administration struggled to show evidence that the censorship was not one-sided. “The government was hard-pressed in court when asked by the judge to identify a single liberal's voice that was suppressed,” Bailey said. “The only example they had was one political opponent of the president.”
When Perkins asked about the constitutionality of the government’s censorship, Bailey did not mince words.
“This is the worst First Amendment violation in this nation’s history,” he said, adding, “we’re going to continue to fight to protect Americans’ right to free speech.”
So far, it seems the federal judge overseeing the case is also skeptical of the Biden administration’s arguments. Earlier this month, MRC Free Speech America reported that, according to Bailey, “the federal government had a hard time convincing [Chief District Judge Terry A. Doughty] that it hasn’t been working with and coercing social media companies to censor free speech.” He added that Doughty “asked the feds if they had ever read George Orwell’s 1984, pointing out the similarities between the case and the book.”
Doughty also warned that the censorship would continue unless stopped: "The threat of future censorship is substantial, and the history of past censorship is strong evidence that the threat of further censorship is not illusory or merely speculative."
Missouri v. Biden notably cites an MRC Free Speech America study that revealed that “Big Tech” social media platforms censored criticism of Biden online 646 times between March 10, 2020, and March 10, 2022.
The Family Research Council is a member of the Free Speech Alliance.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
