In an interview on Fox News’ Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said that over 45 officials in the Biden administration violated the First Amendment’s “fundamental, God-given right to express ourselves.”
In March, Schmitt and Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a lawsuit alleging collusion between the federal government and social media companies to censor certain speech. The judge in the case ordered the depositions of top officials in the administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
“It’s important to take a step back and recognize that the First Amendment protects our fundamental, God-given right to express ourselves, right, to state an opinion, even if somebody doesn’t like it,” Schmitt said during the interview. “That’s what the First Amendment’s all about.”
“We’re going to video-tape these depositions,” Schmitt said to Bongino, adding that the depositions are “an important part of our case to prove that the government actually is engaged in illegal activity with Big Tech.” He added, “We’re going to do everything we can to get them out in public.”
Giving an update on the lawsuit, Schmitt said: “Here’s what we know so far. First of all, during COVID, we know that high-ranking Facebook officials were text messaging the surgeon general of the United States saying, ‘Hey, we took that down, what more can we do?’ We also know that there was a special portal created for Big Tech with the government to take down people and, you know, have them deplatformed.”
He said that Big Tech and the federal government had “weekly censorship meetings.”
“At least forty-five folks from the Biden administration were in constant communication with these social media platforms to censor and suppress speech,” Schmitt said.
