Attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana have won a landmark court case in which they requested to depose top-ranking federal officials.
Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana filed their suit last week with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana against top Biden administration officials for allegedly colluding to suppress free speech.
The list of officials who will be deposed by the Republican AGs include:
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,” Schmitt, who is on pace to replace Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) next month, said in a statement.
“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.
“Throughout this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” Landry said. “This egregious attack on our First Amendment will be met with an equally full-hearted defense of the rights of the American people.”
? ?? 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.— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) October 21, 2022
“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,” he continued.
“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,” says the petition.
“Such communications from the White House impose maximal pressure on social-media companies, which clearly yields the sought-after results,” it noted further.
The suit was filed in May.
