The White House’s attempts to censor anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine misinformation was referenced explicitly in the sweeping limits restricting government contact between Big Tech and social media.
RFK Jr. was mentioned in the preliminary injunction filed by the judge, Trump appointee Terry Doughty, on Tuesday in response to a lawsuit by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri. The lawsuit notes how Clarke Humphrey, the then-digital director for the White House’s COVID-19 Response Team, emailed Twitter on Jan. 23, 2021, to request the removal of a tweet by RFK Jr.
BIDEN OFFICIALS BLOCKED FROM COLLUDING WITH BIG TECH IN MAJOR CENSORSHIP: JUDGE
The email was forwarded to Rob Flaherty, former deputy assistant to the president and director of digital strategy, asking if “we can keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre.
It is unclear what tweet Humphrey was referencing. RFK Jr. had tweeted several links and images critical of the Biden and Trump administration’s approach to COVID-19 vaccines in the past.
Kennedy praised the decision. “This ruling has been widely reported as barring the administration from ‘working with,’ ‘contacting,’ or ‘coordinating with’ social media,” he said in a statement released on Wednesday. “These are euphemisms. The case is about blatant censorship, in which government agencies colluded with and coerced tech platforms to censor Constitutionally-protected speech.”
“The judge got it exactly right when he wrote, ‘Freedom of speech and press is the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom,’” Kennedy added. “Without freedom of speech, there is no democracy.”
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, one of the two attorneys general filing the initial suit, said in a series of tweets that the injunction prohibits nearly all of the federal government from colluding with social media companies. This includes the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Homeland Security.
The DOJ is reviewing the injunction and will “evaluate its options,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement.
