Judge Orders Anthony Fauci And Jen Psaki To Be Deposed By GOP AGs In Landmark Case
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Landry announced that the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana has granted Missouri and Louisiana’s request to depose top-ranking officials in the federal government.
The lawsuit was filed against top-ranking Biden Administration officials for allegedly colluding to suppress freedom of speech. The list of Biden officials who will get grilled by the GOP AGs includes:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, 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 Attorney General Schmitt.
“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.”
“Throughout this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” said Landry. “This egregious attack on our First Amendment will be met with an equally full-hearted defense of the rights of the American people.”
“Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit, seeking to expose that the federal government has worked hand-in-hand with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on their platforms. Our lawsuit has done exactly that – we’ve found a staggering ‘censorship enterprise’ that extends to a multitude of federal agencies and implicates government officials at the highest levels of government, but we’re not done yet,” added Schmitt.
“Now, we’ve added 47 additional defendants to our lawsuit, including several FBI agents and more top-ranking White House officials. We’re also asking the Court to allow our offices to take depositions to question these officials under oath. We’re only just getting started.”
“Pursuant to the third-party subpoena, Meta has identified the FBI’s FITF, as supervised by Laura Dehmlow, and Elvis Chan as involved in the communications between the FBI and Meta that led to Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
The petition says: “Such communications from the White House impose maximal pressure on social-media companies, which clearly yields the sought-after results.
And federal officials are fully aware that such pressure is necessary to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship of views that diverge from the government’s.
CISA Director Jen Easterly, for example, texted with Matthew Masterson about ‘trying to get us in a place where Fed can work with platforms to better understand the mis/dis trends so relevant agencies can try to prebunk/debunk as useful,’ and complained about the Government’s need to overcome the social-media platforms’ ‘hesitation’ to working with the government: ‘Platforms have got to get more comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain.’”
“In fact, such pressure from government officials on social- media companies, along with the many public statements alleged in the Complaint, have succeeded on a grand scale. A veritable army of federal bureaucrats are involved in censorship activities ‘across the federal enterprise.’
There are so many, in fact, that CISA Director Easterly and Matthew Masterson complained in text messages that ‘chaos’ would result if all federal officials were ‘independently’ contacting social-media platforms about so-called misinformation…
On information and belief, as alleged above, the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ was created to impose a bureaucratic structure on the enormous censorship activities already occurring involving dozens of federal officials and many federal agencies.”
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.
🚨 🚨🚨 The court has granted our request to depose Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, FBI Supervisory
— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) October 21, 2022
Special Agent Elvis Chan, and other Biden Administration officials relating to collusion with social media to suppress free speech.