Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) said Friday afternoon that a federal court granted the state’s request for depositions from top-ranking Biden administration officials.
“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,” said Schmitt, who is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in the state.
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana granted depositions from NIAID Director and White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci; Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty or former White House Senior COVID-19 Advisory Andrew Slavitt; former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki; FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan; CISA Director Jen Easterly or CISA official Lauren Protentis; Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; CDC Chief of the Digital Media Branch Carol Crawford; and Acting Coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center Daniel Kimmage.
The officials are accused of colluding with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on a number of topics, including COVID.
“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,” Schmitt said 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.”
Doughty previously ruled last month that the plaintiffs in the case were “entitled to external communications by Karine Jean-Pierre and Dr. [Anthony] Fauci in their capacities as White House Press Secretary and Chief Medical Advisor to the President to third-party social media platforms.”
Doughty also ordered that the Biden administration must produce records from HHS’ deputy assistant secretary for public engagement, the head of HHS’ digital engagement team, the deputy director of the Office of Communications in HRSA, and HHS’ deputy digital director.
Schmitt then tweeted out examples of records that have been disclosed so far.
A senior FB official sent an email to the Surgeon General stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email chain follows the SG’s “misinformation health advisory” in July 2021. pic.twitter.com/PeqglHalRI
— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) September 1, 2022
Further communications show that Facebook is “increasing the strength of our demotions for COVID and vaccine-related content that third party fact checkers rate as ‘Partly False’ or ‘Missing Context.’
— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) September 1, 2022
There are several instances where Facebook wouldn’t proceed with censoring freedom of speech on their platform until they had input, or a “debunking” from the CDC. Twitter followed the same course in at least one email. pic.twitter.com/7rIId8Unsa
— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) September 1, 2022
A White House official was even concerned about parody Fauci accounts and coordinated with Facebook to take them down. pic.twitter.com/e14x6nHOzm
— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) September 1, 2022
The Deputy Secretary at Treasury sought to connect with social media platforms and influence operations on social media. pic.twitter.com/i6Wy13dNgK
— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) September 1, 2022
In August, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called out Meta, Facebook’s parent company, over its decision to decrease the reach of political content on Facebook, accusing the tech giant of being politically biased.
“Facebook made sure no one saw the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election,” the House Republican tweeted. “But now that America has record inflation, rising crime, & a border crisis—all as a result of Dem policies—Facebook is shutting down more ‘political content’ to hide the truth from Americans.”
The company originally announced these changes in February 2021, shortly after Democrat President Joe Biden was inaugurated, saying that it was hoping to decrease political content in news feeds. These changes included moves to “rank political content in people’s feeds using different signals.”
Meta announced in late July, just ahead of the 2022 midterms, that it would be implementing the changes around the world to decrease “political content” in users’ Facebook feeds.