The United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana has granted Missouri and Louisiana’s request for sworn testimony from NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, among others, in their lawsuit against top-ranking Biden Administration officials for allegedly colluding with Big Tech to suppress freedom of speech.
🚨BREAKING: The court has granted our request to depose Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, FBI Supervisory
Special Agent Elvis Chan, and other Biden Administration officials relating to collusion with social media to suppress free speech.🚨— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) October 21, 2022
Communications between federal officials and social media companies, released last month, revealed how the Biden regime and Big Tech coordinated to silence opposing views on a number of topics—especially COVID-19— in “a vast censorship enterprise,” the attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana alleged in a court filing on September 1.
The communications, which were obtained pursuant to a federal judge’s court order in July, revealed that Biden officials held weekly censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress posts about the COVID vaccines that countered the regime’s “safe and effective” narrative.
In addition to Fauci, Psaki, and Murthy, according to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the list of granted depositions includes Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan.
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden Administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” said Schmitt in a statement. “It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
The original lawsuit was filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on May 5, 2022. Missouri and Louisiana filed a Motion for Expedited Preliminary Injunction-Related Discovery on June 17, 2022, and that motion was granted on July 12, 2022, clearing the way for Missouri and Louisiana to gather discovery and documents from Biden Administration officials and social media companies.
The request for depositions was filed on October 10, 2022, and that motion was granted on October 21, 2022, allowing Missouri and Louisiana to depose top-ranking officials in the federal government under oath.
In a joint statement last month, the state AGs alleged that the regime’s “censorship enterprise” included “dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far, who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.”
The joint statement went on to allege: “The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials.