In our July 13 article, Rejoice and Be Glad, we wrote that a Federal District Court Judge granted a preliminary injunction, barring various Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies for the purpose of suppressing free speech. The Biden Administration appealed that ruling, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit confirmed that ruling and unanimously agreed that the White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI had "coerced" or "significantly encouraged" the platforms, "in violation of the First Amendment," to suppress speech that federal officials viewed as dangerously inaccurate or misleading.
The Court declared that “Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech. That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling the social-media companies' decision-making processes.”
In regard to the FBI, the Court stated that its officials "regularly met with the platforms, alerting them to "misinformation trends in the lead-up to federal elections." They warned social media companies about "Russian troll farms" and "hack and dump" operations by "state-sponsored actors." Given its authority as the leading federal law enforcement agency, the 5th Circuit says, "the FBI probably coerced the platforms into moderating content and "encouraged them to do so by effecting changes to their moderation policies, in violation of the First Amendment."
The Court, of course, was referring to the FBI’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. Thanks to the hearings held by House Republicans, we now know that the FBI became aware of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop in October 2019. Furthermore, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified that the FBI quickly verified the authenticity of the laptop in November 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID.
So why then did the FBI warn Twitter during weekly meetings prior to the 2020 election that it could expect "hack-and-leak operations" by "state actors" involving Hunter Biden”? Laura Dehmlow, the section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) has testified that the same FBI personnel, who were warning social media companies about a potential Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation in the run-up to the 2020 election, knew that the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was not Russian disinformation.
It gets worse! Shortly afterward, when the New York Post broke the story of Hunter’s laptop right before the 2020 election, Facebook and Twitter asked the FBI if the laptop was real, and the FBI’s replied “no comment.” Ask yourself: Why did the FBI hide the truth that the laptop actually belonged to Hunter? Why didn’t the FBI let the media and the American people know the truth about the laptop’s contents, and let the American people themselves decide how important the story was? Instead, Twitter and Facebook immediately took that no comment and ran with it! Twitter punished the New York Post by suspending its account for weeks, and anybody who tried to share the link to the Post’s story on Twitter was barred from doing so. Likewise, Facebook took action to limit the story’s reach on its platform. As a result, millions of Americans had no opportunity to read or hear about this story and decide for themselves how important it was in determining how they were going to vote.
I think the censorship efforts of the FBI and the Biden Administration were and are reprehensible; but many of my friends and relatives disagree, for they are far more afraid of giving people the platform and the power of spreading lies and spewing hate. The problem is: who gets the ultimate power to determine what’s a lie and what constitutes hate? The government? Every dictatorship in the world has that power, and they use that power to enrich themselves and oppress the people. It should not happen here in the United States. It is far more important to give people the ability to freely express their own opinions, and let the people collectively decide how to proceed after they learn all sides of the argument.
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