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by Dr. Joseph Mercola
January 17,
2023
from
Mercola Website
Story at-a-glance
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Between the documentation obtained through a recent
lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files
released by Elon Musk, it's become quite clear that
every facet of the U.S. government, including its
intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and
unconstitutional censorship
-
We
now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key
instigator and implementer of the government's illegal
censorship of Americans. The FBI has also actively
interfered in multiple elections - all while inventing
the narrative that foreign nations were interfering
-
Twitter has worked hand in hand with the U.S. Department
of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their
efforts to influence foreign governments using fake
news, computerized deepfake videos and bots
-
The
Twitter files also reveal members of Congress have a
direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended
on their behalf and content removed at their whim
-
Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White
House filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and
Louisiana show at least 67 federal employees across more
than a dozen agencies are also engaged in illegal
censorship activities. This includes aides to President
Biden, who pressured social media companies to change
their policies to fit White House demands for censorship
Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against
the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it's
become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government,
including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and
unconstitutional censorship.
In the video far below (page end), Fox News host Tucker Carlson
interviews independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who has spent
weeks sifting through the released Twitter files and reported on the
contents.
FBI Has Gone
Off the Rails
Importantly, we now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the
key instigator and implementer of the government's illegal
censorship of Americans' political and medical views.
The agency has also, on a
regular basis and for unknown purposes, asked Twitter to reveal the
location of specific Twitter users, such as actor Billy Baldwin.
What's more, internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos,
emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its
influence over tech platforms for years, so, government censorship
is not something that came about in response to the COVID crisis.
Nor is the censorship
limited to
COVID or public health information in general.
Evidence shows the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections
- all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were doing
the interfering. 1
As noted by Sen. Josh
Hawley, R-Mo., these kinds of activities are,
"the biggest threat
to our constitutional democracy today." 2
As just one example, we
now know the FBI plotted to quench the Hunter Biden laptop story
well before the first report about it was published.
In collaboration with
Twitter, Facebook and the Aspen Institute, the FBI held a tabletop
exercise to practice the shaping of the media's coverage of a
potential "hack and dump" operation involving
Hunter Biden
material. 3,4
As reported by the New
York Post: 5
"[The] drill was put
into practical use weeks later, when The Post broke the news
about Hunter Biden's infamous laptop - which was either ignored
or downplayed by most mainstream news outlets and suppressed by
both Twitter and Facebook."
There's also evidence
showing the FBI has been shielding Hunter Biden and working with
social media to censor bad press about him as far back as 2018. 6
That job was probably
made easier by the fact that reportedly former FBI agents work at
both Twitter and Facebook.
For example, Jim Baker spent three decades with the FBI
before becoming Twitter's head lawyer, 7 and Facebook employs no less
than 115 "former" employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other
intelligence agencies, most of whom now work in Facebook's content
moderation department. 8
Twitter Paid
to Censor Americans and Promote US Propaganda
Disturbingly, we now also have evidence showing that while Twitter
insisted it was cracking down on covert government propaganda
accounts.
They only tracked down and banned foreign
government-affiliated propaganda while working hand in hand with the
U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in
their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news,
computerized deep-fake videos and bots. 9
As reported by The
Intercept: 10
"Behind the scenes,
Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S.
military's online psychological ops.
Despite knowledge that
Pentagon propaganda accounts used overt identities, Twitter did
not suspend many for around two years or more.
Some remain
active...
In 2017 a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a
list of 52 Arab language accounts 'we use to amplify certain
messages.'
The official asked for priority service for six
accounts, verification for one and 'whitelist' abilities for the
others."
Whitelisted accounts have
a "validated" status similar to that of the blue check mark, which
ensures they are promoted in searches. These accounts also don't get
shadow-banned or limited by other means.
Adding insult to injury,
the FBI has been using taxpayer dollars to pay Twitter for their
censorship and propaganda services - more than $3.4 million between
October 2019 and February 2021 alone. 11
Congressional Members
Involved in Censoring Americans
The FBI has not acted alone, however.
Far from it...
The Twitter files reveal
members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had
accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their
whim.
As reported by
MSN:12
"...Taibbi...
reported that Twitter,
'received an
astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for
individuals they didn't like to be banned.'
An example he
shared was one sent in November 2020 by [Rep. Adam] Schiff's
office, who contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take
action regarding,
'alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists'
against Schiff's staff, including aide Sean Misko.
'Remove any and
all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from
its service - to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to
that content,' the request to Twitter read.
'Suspend the many
accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have
repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies'."
Other government leaders
have been less clandestine in their censoring operations.
Sen.
Elizabeth Warren,
for example, wrote an open letter to Amazon demanding they ban my
book, "The Truth about COVID-19."
Similarly, two
state attorneys general, Letitia James and William Tong,
publicly threatened social media companies with legal
ramifications if they refused to censor the "Misinformation Dozen."
President
Joe Biden
also publicly called on social media platforms to
ban my accounts.
But it gets
worse...
Government Has Been
Weaponized Against the People
Discovery documents
from a
lawsuit against the White House
13 filed by the
attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and
Jeff Landry) show at least 67
14,15
federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are engaged in
these kinds of illegal censorship activities.
This includes
officials from:
Consultants from
the strategic communications and marketing firm Reingold
16 were also hired to manage the government's collusion
with social media in this intentional effort to violate our
Constitutional right to free speech.
A Look Inside the White
House Censorship Machine
In
a January 8,
2023, op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Jenin Younes and
Aaron Kheriaty reviewed a series of emails between White House
digital media director Rob Flaherty and a Facebook executive,
illustrating how the White House pressured the company to censor and
remove vaccine content even though Facebook itself
characterized the material as "often-true content:" 17
"Newly
released documents show that the White House has played a major
role in censoring Americans on social media.
Email exchanges
between Rob Flaherty... and social-media executives prove the
companies put COVID censorship policies in place in response to
relentless, coercive pressure from the White House - not
voluntarily."
Flaherty also
demanded Facebook limit the spread of viral content on WhatsApp, a
private messaging app with broad reach among "immigrant communities
and communities of color."
In the end, Facebook acquiesced to all of
Flaherty's demands to prevent the spread of vaccine hesitancy and
control political speech.
As noted by Younes
and Kheriaty: 18
"President
Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General
Vivek
Murthy... publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if
they didn't heighten censorship.
On July 16, 2021, a reporter
asked Mr. Biden [about] his 'message to platforms like Facebook.'
He replied,
'They're killing people.'
Mr. Biden later claimed he meant
users, not platforms, were killing people. But the record shows Facebook itself was the target of the White House's pressure
campaign."
White House Pressured
Google and YouTube to Do Its Bidding
Flaherty also had
Google in his crosshairs, and accused YouTube of "'funneling' people
into vaccine hesitancy," adding that this concern was "shared at the
highest (and I mean the highest) levels of the White House."
"These
emails establish a clear pattern,"
Younes and Kheriaty write.
"Mr.
Flaherty, representing the White House, expresses anger at the
companies' failure to censor COVID-related content to his
satisfaction.
The companies change their policies to address his
demands. As a result, thousands of Americans were silenced for
questioning government approved COVID narratives.
Two of the
Missouri plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, are
epidemiologists whom multiple social-media platforms censored at
the government's behest for expressing views that were
scientifically well-founded but diverged from the government
line - for instance, that children and adults with natural
immunity from prior infection don't need COVID vaccines...
The First
Amendment bars government from engaging in viewpoint-based
censorship.
The state-action doctrine bars government from
circumventing constitutional strictures by suborning private
companies to accomplish forbidden ends indirectly.
Defenders
of the government have fallen back on the claim that cooperation
by the tech companies was voluntary, from which they conclude
that the First Amendment isn't implicated.
The reasoning is
dubious, but even if it were valid, the premise has now been
proved false.
The
Flaherty emails demonstrate that the federal government
unlawfully coerced the companies in an effort to ensure that
Americans would be exposed only to state-approved information
about COVID-19.
As a result of that unconstitutional state
action, Americans were given the false impression of a
scientific 'consensus' on critically important issues around
COVID-19."
Weaponization of
Government Select Committee Impaneled
Taken together, the
revelations from the Twitter files and this lawsuit clearly
demonstrate that most, if not all, aspects of the U.S. government
have been secretly weaponized to undermine and circumvent the
Constitutional rights of the people.
As noted by Taibbi
in his Fox News interview:
"This is
not a partisan story.
It's a story about the architecture of the
intelligence community and law enforcement getting its hands on
speech, and on the ability of people to communicate with one
another through platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
And they're
doing this in a very profound way - it's much more serious than
what I thought at the beginning..."
While the danger
we're in as a nation is far more dire than anyone suspected, there
is some good news.
A new select committee, chaired by Rep.
Jim
Jordan, has been launched to investigate the weaponization of
government, the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ's
investigation into and harassment of parents who spoke out against
COVID mandates, critical race theory and the sexualization of their
children at school board meetings.
As reported by The
Post Millennial: 19
"This
investigative panel will demand emails and correspondence
between the Biden administration and big tech companies, and
follows the massive revelations that came to light through the
recent release of the Twitter files.
Newly minted House Speaker Kevin
McCarthy... was asked to form the committee as part of the
negotiations that brought him to power...
The probe
into communications between tech giants and President Biden's
aides will look for government pressure that could have resulted
in censorship or harassment of conservatives - or squelching of
debate on polarizing policies, including
the CDC on COVID..."
While it's likely
that government personnel and agencies will try to ignore the
committee's requests for information, the committee does have
subpoena power, and hopefully will not be too timid to use it.
Unfortunately,
since the GOP does not control the Senate, it's unlikely they'll be
able to pass any new laws based on the committee's findings.
That
said, legislation to penalize government censorship has already been
introduced, and you can help push it forward by asking your
representatives to support it.
Support Legislation to
Penalize Government Censorship
The Protecting
Speech from Government Interference Act 20
(HR.8752), introduced by three Republican House Representatives on
the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees,
including Jordan,
is specifically aimed at preventing federal
employees from using their positions to influence censorship
decisions by tech platforms.
The bill would
create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or
encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise
discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines
and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate
social media censorship.
While the U.S.
Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting
free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool - and we
clearly need enforcement, seeing how more than a dozen agencies are
flouting the Constitution and have done so for years.
People might
tend to think twice, though, when they know there's a personal price
to pay...
Video
Sources and
References
1 Coffee
& Covid 2022 December 19, 2022
2 Rumble
Glenn Greenwald December 19, 2022 Timestamp: 44:23
3 Twitter
Michael Shellenberger December 19, 2022
4, 6, 7, 8 Coffee
& Covid December 20, 2022
5 New
York Post December 19, 2022
9 Coffee
& Covid December 21, 2022
10 The
Intercept December 20, 2022
11 Meryl
Nass Substack December 20, 2022
12 MSN
January 3, 2023
13 State
of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph
Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213
14 WAFB.com
October 10, 2022
15 State
of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph
Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213-TAD-KDM
16 Reingold
17, 18 WSJ
January 8, 2023
19 Post
Millennial January 9, 2023
20 HR
8752 - Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act
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