Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. celebrated a federal judge’s decision to block the Biden administration from interacting with social media companies that have censored him and others.
As Breitbart News reported, U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty — a Donald Trump appointee — issued a temporary injunction on July 4th in a suit by Missouri and Louisiana to challenge the administration’s alleged censorship.
Critics say that by telling social media companies what “disinformation” and “misinformation” to suppress, on the topics of elections and the coronavirus, doing through private companies what the government itself could never do under the First Amendment.
Judge Doughty appeared to agree: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”
Kennedy noted in a celebratory tweet that he is mentioned on page 17 of the judge’s decision:
Federal judge orders President Biden to stop censoring his critics including me. The decision mentions me on page 17. Happy Independence Day Everyone!https://t.co/nEE40XSjpC
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 4, 2023
The decision also mentions Kennedy on page 9. Here is the full text of references to Kennedy (citations omitted):
On January 23, 2021, three days after President Biden took office, Clarke Humphrey (“Humphrey”), who at the time was the Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team, emailed Twitter and requested the removal of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.21 Humphrey sent a copy of the email to Rob Flaherty (“Flaherty”), former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy, on the email and asked if “we can keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre.” The email read, “Hey folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP.”
…
Other examples of posts that did not violate Facebook’s policies but would nonetheless be suppressed included content that originated from the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit activist group headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (labeled by Defendants as one of the “Disinformation Dozen”).
…
The Virality Project flagged the following persons and/or organizations as spreaders of misinformation:
i. Jill Hines and Health Freedom of Louisiana;
ii. One America News;
iii. Breitbart News;
iv. Alex Berenson;
v. Tucker Carlson;
vi. Fox News;
vii. Candace Owens;
viii. The Daily Wire;
ix. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.;
x. Dr. Simone Gold and America’s Frontline Doctors; and
xi. Dr. Joyce Mercula.
The idea of a “disinformation dozen” emerged in 2021 from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, described by Breitbart News tech editor Allum Bokhari as a “far-left British nonprofit currently waging a campaign of pressure against Facebook to force the social media giant to clamp down further against conservative media… backed by a shadowy Swiss investment group that is funding communist China’s bid for global dominance.”
The attempt to censor Kennedy was noted in March during a hearing of the House Weaponization Committee, when Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) brought it up — and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) tried, and failed, to deny it.
The case is Missouri v. Biden, in the Western District of Louisiana, No. 3:22-cv-01213-TAD-KDM.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.