Louisiana AG takes on Big Tech for colluding with Biden's federal government

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Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is taking Big Tech companies to task for colluding with the U.S. government, filing a number of lawsuits against the Biden administration over social media censorship, the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, and a number of other key issues. 

“What we found in what the whistleblowers put out was that the government was actually engaged—and the White House—in directly communicating with Big Tech on stories and information that they either wanted suppressed or put out,” said Landry in an interview with the Epoch Times over the weekend. 

"So the subpoenas have gone out there being served, I think Dr. #Fauci got served, & other members of the President's cabinet, & they're going to have to send us communications between them & the platforms."@AGJeffLandry on his lawsuit challenging government-#BigTech collusion. pic.twitter.com/MxzU2ryi7M

— Jan Jekielek (@JanJekielek) July 31, 2022

Speaking to Epoch Times’ Jan Jekielek, Landry described the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board, which has been "paused" following backlash, as “extremely troublesome.” 

“When you think about the federal government creating an agency called the Disinformation Board. That’s prima facie violation of the First Amendment,” he said. “Think about it. This is the government basically going to filter information to the American people, are basically going to ensure that some information gets out to the American people and some information doesn’t get out.” 

“Of course, that is exactly why the First Amendment was established under our Bill of Rights. That’s exactly the kind of conduct the founders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights wanted to prevent. They did not want the government censoring information to citizens,” he continued. 

Landry explained why he decided to file a lawsuit along with other attorneys general, including Attorney General Eric Schmitt in Missouri. 

🚨BREAKING: Missouri and Louisiana just filed suit against Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, Dr. Fauci, and other top-ranking officials for allegedly colluding with social media companies to suppress freedom of speech under the guise of combating “misinformation.”

THREAD pic.twitter.com/cgMmyk2nZz

— Attorney General Eric Schmitt (@AGEricSchmitt) May 5, 2022

Landry said, “General Schmitt and I believed that basically, when the government coerces a private actor to do something, or to engage in conduct of which the government is prevented from doing, which would otherwise be a violation of your constitutional right, like censoring speech… If the government is actually censoring the speech, that’s the government violating your First Amendment, right?” 

“If the government coerces or works with Big Tech and says to Big Tech, ‘We want you to censor this information,’ and then Big Tech does that then guess what? Then Big Tech now becomes a government actor and is subject to violating citizens’ constitutional rights,” said Landry. “That was the legal theory that we had in play."

Landry says examples of the government’s collusion with Big Tech companies in suppressing public communications by private individuals will come out as the presiding judge granted the prosecutors’ motion for discovery. 

“I think Dr. Fauci got served, and other members of the President’s cabinet," said Landry. "They’re going to have to send us communications between them and the platforms, and what we believe we’ll find is communications between them telling them what they should and shouldn’t put out, or what they should suppress and what they should amplify."