Less than two months after Mark Zuckerberg admitted in front of Congress that his company, Facebook, was pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to unfairly censor Americans, particularly regarding COVID-19 content, a bombshell new lawsuit is aimed at the Biden Administration for allegedly orchestrating a global censorship campaign.
According to a lawsuit filed by America First Legal (AFL), the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) allegedly refused to provide records on the Biden-Harris administration’s potential role in global censorship.
The conservative organization filed the lawsuit last Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming certain agencies illegally concealed records about the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and Brazil’s censorship of social media.
Previous reports from other outlets say that AFL filed FOIA requests to determine if the Biden-Harris admin had any advanced knowledge or role in Durov’s arrest and Brazil’s crackdown on Twitter.
/1🚨We just sued the Biden-Harris Department of State, Commerce, and USAID for illegally concealing records related to the U.S. gov't involvement in recent efforts to suppress free speech, specifically the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and social media censorship in Brazil. pic.twitter.com/Sar5Zm2boK
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) October 9, 2024
According to the AFL press release, the complaint asserts the Biden-Harris admin “appear[s] to have incentivized foreign governments” to censor social media platforms, namely Telegram and Twitter.
“The Defendants have failed to produce the requested records within the statutory time limit,” the complaint alleges. The lawsuit further claims the agencies violated FOIA by denying AFL’s requests for expedited processing.
“Former officials at the Department of State have alleged that the U.S. government was involved in the actions taken against these platforms, which are used by hundreds of millions of people globally,” the document says.
The press release also states there is “significant reason” to believe the Biden-Harris administration may have had a role in France’s arrest of Telegram’s CEO.
“The American people have every right to know whether their government and their taxpayer dollars are being used to suppress free speech around the world,” America First Legal’s Executive Director Gene Hamilton said in the press release. “The collusive censorship enterprise is well-resourced, well-placed, highly motivated, and willing to do anything to silence viewpoints and voices with which they disagree. We are committed to getting to the bottom of this and will deliver the truth for the American people.”
The legal group also pointed to a new report by journalist Michael Shellenberger that claims U.S. agencies, including the FBI, were financing censorship advocacy and “advising the Brazilian government on how to engage in censorship.”