On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-Texas) announced that the state would be launching a fraud probe into the far-left publication Media Matters.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the probe comes after Media Matters released a report on Thursday accusing the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, of putting anti-Semitic content next to advertisements. Although subsequent studies have proven this to be mostly false, multiple major corporations, including Apple, Disney, and IBM, have announced their plans to boycott advertising on the site.
“Attorney General Paxton was extremely troubled by the allegations that Media Matters, a radical anti-free speech organization, fraudulently manipulated data on X.com (formerly known as Twitter),” the Attorney General’s office said in a statement. “We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square.”
Paxton’s probe comes shortly after Elon Musk, the owner of X, announced his own “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and other entities that engage in similar smear campaigns against conservative organizations. Following the initial wave of boycotts, numerous conservative groups have announced plans to invest more in advertising on X to make up for some of the lost money.
“Fraud has both civil and criminal penalties,” Musk said in a post on the site, shortly after the lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Monday.
The attack by Media Matters and its corporate allies is widely seen as yet another attempt to bring down the former Twitter after Musk purchased it for $44 billion in October of last year, when he vowed to make it a site that would once again be friendly to freedom of speech. Since Musk’s takeover, many previously-banned accounts have been restored, including the account of former President Donald Trump. Many left-wing entities have tried to accuse X of fostering bigotry and misinformation, but with no evidence to back up such claims.