Report: Biden Administration Pushed Twitter to Ban Prominent Vaccine Skeptic Journalist
A journalist who was banned on Twitter for 11 months prior to being reinstated alleges the Biden administration wanted him censored because of his skeptical comments about the COVID-19 vaccine.
In August 2021, Alex Berenson was banned from Twitter for allegedly violating its COVID misinformation policy, as noted by the Daily Mail. Berenson did not take kindly to the action. He sued Twitter in December and in July was reinstated. He said Twitter admitted that he should not have been banned.
But now Berenson is alleging on his Substack account that there was more at work than simply the heavy hand of social media Thought Police.
“Biden Administration officials asked Twitter to ban me because of my tweets questioning the Covid vaccines, even as company employees believed I had followed Twitter’s rules,” he wrote.
My new Stack, on the White House’s explicit demand that Twitter ban me, months before it did.
This is state action and a violation of my First Amendment rights, period.
Berenson v. Biden (and Slavitt), coming soon to a federal court near you. https://t.co/IVBWspnKoo
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 12, 2022
“This is a state action and a violation of my First Amendment rights, period,” Berenson wrote on his Twitter account Friday.
Berenson buttressed his allegation on Substack with internal messages from Twitter, redacted versions of which are included in his post. He noted that he obtained the messages as part of his lawsuit against Twitter.
During an April 22, 2021, conversation about a meeting at the White House, one employee revealed to another that the White House asked “one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” according to one posted excerpt.
A second excerpt says Andrew Slavitt, a senior advisor to President Joe Biden’s COVID response team, focused on Berenson specifically. The comment said Slavitt “suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Hey @ASlavitt, remember how you tried to use the power of the federal government to deplatform me?
Time to lawyer up pic.twitter.com/lAex3UvxzP
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 12, 2022
Berenson wrote that in another excerpt, which he did not post, one employee told another “I’ve taken a pretty close look at his account, and I don’t think any of it’s violative.”
Berenson filled in the blanks about the implication behind these messages, noting that “top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.”
Berenson explained how his rights could be violated.
“The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter. But if the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become ‘state actors’ that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does,” he wrote.
The White House privately demanded Twitter ban @AlexBerenson months before the company did so
Looks like Berenson has found the smoking gun linking Twitter censorship to the White House. Thus making Twitter a “state actor” for purposes of #1stamendment https://t.co/oDP1Z1SdFg
— Phil Holloway ❄️ ? (@PhilHollowayEsq) August 12, 2022
He noted that past lawsuits alleging Twitter has suppressed a user’s First Amendment rights have failed because “people who have been banned have not shown the specific demands from government officials that are necessary to support state action claims.”
“In my case, though, federal officials appear to have gone far beyond generically encouraging Twitter to support COVID vaccines or discourage ‘misinformation’ (i.e. information that the government does not like). Instead, top officials targeted me personally,” he wrote.
Berenson promised to share more tidbits from the information he collected, noting that other journalists wanted Twitter to muzzle him.
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