During a hearing held Tuesday on a ruling in a landmark government censorship lawsuit, lawyers arguing on behalf of the defendants — key Biden administration officials — denied the established facts, deflected from the controversy and defended the defendants’ actions through outlandish justifications.
Despite the uproar surrounding the case, Judge Terry Doughty’s order in Missouri v. Biden was straightforward. It prohibited government actors from colluding with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech.”
In other words, the defendants — including the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Justice — must obey the Constitution they swore to uphold by adhering to the First Amendment.
The censorship regime responded with familiar doublethink: denying the censorship exists while arguing that it must continue.
On Tuesday, the court held a hearing to consider whether Doughty’s order should be reinstated.
The oral arguments revealed the government’s three-part strategy: deny, deflect and defend. Its lawyers denied the established facts, deflected from the controversy, and defended its actions through outlandish justifications.
In doing so, they demonstrated the censorship apparatus’s lack of remorse for stripping Americans of their constitutional liberties. Even worse, they insist that the totalitarian operations must continue.
1. Deny: blame the facts
At the hearing, government defendants maintained that plaintiffs have manufactured the case.
Like their allies in the media, they argued that allegations of censorship were nothing more than “an assortment of out-of-context quotes and select portions of documents that distort the record to build a narrative that the bare facts simply do not support.”
The censorship is nonexistent, they insist. It is a “thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory,” in the words of Larry Tribe.
Unlike issues of legal interpretation, this is a factual matter. Either government actors colluded with Big Tech to suppress Americans’ free speech rights or they did not.
Discovery revealed extensive documentation proving that they did, and the defendants make no effort to explain how Doughty’s 155-page order detailing dozens of violations of the First Amendment is merely “an assortment of out-of-context quotes.”
Journalists including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Alex Berenson have detailed the “Censorship-Industrial Complex,” the entangled web of government agencies, non-governmental organizations and private-public partnerships that seek to control the free flow of information.
But reviewing that series of connections and collusions is unnecessary — the defendants’ recorded statements contradict their denial.
“Thank you for the ongoing collaboration,” one bureaucrat wrote after a U.S. Government “industry meeting” with Big Tech companies in October 2020.
White House Advisor Rob Flaherty took a different tack in his demands to Twitter:
“Please remove this account immediately.” The company complied within an hour. “Are you guys fucking serious?” he wrote to company officials after they failed to censor critics of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.” His boss was similarly direct regarding posts from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Hey Folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP.”
There is no need to recreate Doughty’s 155-page opinion, but the denial of the censorship regime is facially absurd. Alex Berenson’s case, the revelations of the Twitter files, and the undisputed facts of Missouri v. Biden refute the defendant’s premise.
2. Deflect: blame the Russians
Rather than address the case’s inconvenient facts, government lawyers quickly pivoted to their second tactic: deflection. They avoided the case and Doughty’s ruling in favor of a hypothetical narrative.
At one point, they defended government agencies’ right to issue health advisories that say “the vaccines work or smoking is dangerous.”
They argued, “There’s nothing unlawful about the government’s use of the bully pulpit.” That reasoning was uncontroversial, but it was not responsive to Doughty’s order.
Under Doughty’s ruling, the White House can denounce journalists, deliver press briefings, publish on social media, enjoy the bully pulpit and take advantage of the friendly media environment; it just can’t encourage private companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.
The defense conflates free speech with control over information to deflect attention from the censorship at issue. The tactic is not limited to the government’s powers under the order.
During the hearing, the judge asked the defense attorneys whether saying “the COVID vaccine does not work” is constitutionally protected free speech.
“That speech itself could be protected,” the attorney responded at one point. After repeatedly refusing to concede that the First Amendment protects political opinions that deviate from President Joe Biden’s agenda, he resorted to Russian fear-mongering.
“Let’s say it was spoken by a covert Russian operative, that would not be protected by free speech,” he told the judge. Like the issue of the government’s “use of the bully pulpit,” restricting Russian operatives’ speech is unrelated to Doughty’s order.
The attorney’s refusal to defend basic First Amendment liberties was telling. The defense instinctively changed the issue from free speech to national security, relying on an oft-used fear tactic to subvert the First Amendment.
These deflections deliberately obfuscated the purpose of the hearings. Defendants implied the plaintiffs sought to ban anti-smoking public service announcements and fund Kremlin media campaigns. Like their strategy of denial, the goal was to avoid discussion of their extensive censorship operations.
3. Defend: blame the virus
When the government was forced to address the case, it resorted to claiming that COVID-19 justified the abolition of constitutional liberties. The pandemic-made-us-censor argument continued the pervasive Doublethink.
Eradicating democratic norms was necessary to protect democracy, they reasoned. Previously, the Biden administration told the court that reversing the order was necessary “to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Defendants argued that the evidence of the case vindicates the government actors. The attorneys said:
“It shows, in the face of urgent crises, a once-in-a-generation pandemic and bipartisan findings of foreign interference with U.S. elections, the government responsibly exercised its prerogative to speak on matters of public concern.”
They continued:
“It promoted accurate information to protect the public and our democracy from these threats. And it used the bully pulpit to call on various sectors of society, including social media companies, to make efforts to reduce the spread of misinformation.”
Demonstrating no remorse, they remain proud of their efforts to usurp the First Amendment because of their self-professed noble aims. They expect this defense to evade judicial scrutiny.
When confronted with past censorship — including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s “switchboarding” leading up to the 2020 election — defendants reasoned that prior conduct was not pertinent to the case because plaintiffs could not prove it will happen again.
They described the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s unconstitutional censorship campaigns as “occurring long in the past.”
They argued that health officials’ emails working to silence opponents should be disregarded because they were sent “more than two and a half years ago.”
The censorship apparatus is asking the courts to trust them to act responsibly despite repeatedly demonstrating its indifference, or perhaps disdain, toward the First Amendment.
While the government’s denials and deflections are insulting to the citizens they purport to represent, we must remain focused on their aim: they appealed Doughty’s order because they oppose constitutional restraints on their control of information.
We would hope that requiring the government to obey the Constitution would be uncontroversial; now, it may signify whether the rule of law still stands in the U.S.
Originally published by Brownstone Institute.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
The media won’t say
The “republicans “put up no objection
The educated are ignorant…
The good is thrown away for the perfect
The perfect WILL NEVER be achieved
The bad are held in esteem
The obvious is overlooked
The egregious is watered down
The language is twisted
There is NO moral authority
Only immoral “authority “
Nobody knows how to act
Everybody wants to be TYRANT
Nobody has the cobbles to admit it
And the average person is not aware of any of the above
MSM Normalizing A “Worrying” And “Puzzling” Global Epidemic Of Cancer Among Younger People
The Mockingbird MSM has been tapped on their proverbial shoulders by their CIA handlers to slowly roll out the grim eugenics truth about the PSYOP-19 “vaccines.”
For now, only the NY Post was allowed to touch upon the real cause of this turbo cancer epidemic by invoking the “long vax” term, which is code for VAIDS…
he likes of CNN and The Boston Globe were recently ordered to commence seeding the turbo cancer epidemic narrative by blaming anything and everything but the “vaccine:”…
According to The Boston Globe this worldwide array of turbo cancer trend is caused by:
Lifestyle, sugary drinks, sleep disruption may boost early-onset cancers, which appear biologically different from those in the old.
Most importantly….
But CNN did touch upon the gut microbiome, which we now know is negatively impacted by both PSYOP-19 and the DEATHVAX™:
According to Dr. Hazan, one of the key attributes of Ivermectin is that it replenishes the critical bifido bacteria.
Just like during the “pandemic,” the most efficacious early treatment drugs such as Ivermectin were vilified precisely because they worked so well, so too during this current turbo cancer epidemic all inexpensive and truly effective drugs are being suppressed…
What we also know is that inexpensive repurposed drugs like Ivermectin and Fenbendazole may not just prevent and cure cancer, but also help remove the deadly Spike Proteins through a large binding affinity.
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/vaccine-update-msm-normalizing-a
Saul Alinsky said, “NEVER GIVE UP THE CON!”
As long as it is officially denied it is “true”. 75% of people believe 9/11 was an inside job. 80% of people believe the elections are rigged. But as long as the perpetrators keep lying the lie cannot be denied.