Biden’s War on Social Media Posts
A president's hatred of the First Amendment.
To remind you of what the First Amendment is:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I feel this is important to bring up, because now, more than ever, our right to free speech comes under attack. Particularly from a higher-up position.
I’m talking about President Joe Biden. Yes, the same president that was pushing for the longest time to take care of the people that voted him into office. Apparently he’s not too fond about what some people are saying about him on social media.
The Epoch Times recently reported that a federal judge has granted a partial injunction that prevents Biden administration officials and government agencies (including the FBI and the Justice Department) from working alongside big tech firms to censor accounts or posts on social media.
This follows a censorship-by-proxy lawsuit that was brought on by two Attorney Generals in Louisiana and Missouri, who noted that Biden administration officials and agencies were actually pressuring social media companies to not only remove posts, but also suspend particular accounts.
As a result, these agencies cannot engage “in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech,” per the official injunction.
“This could be arguably one of the most important First Amendment cases in modern history,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry told The Epoch Times following the injunction.
“If you look at the opinion that the judge lays out, he takes from our argument that this is basically one of the most massive undertakings of the federal government to limit American speech in the history of our country. The things that we uncovered, in this case, should be both shocking, appalling, and concerning for all Americans.”
But the real question is why. Why would Biden and his administration go to great lengths to silence certain accounts and social media posts? I’ve got two guesses.
First, and probably foremost, is when he went on the attack against “MAGA republicans” back in September. He noted how these people “threaten our very democracy,” with so many taking to social media to post their thoughts on him and other political matters.
This might be a bit far-fetched, but think about it. Biden has deep disdain for anyone that supports former President Donald Trump or, for that matter, these “MAGA Republicans” he’s discussing. So of course he’d go after them on social media, in the hopes of keeping things “justified” – for his own sake, of course.
A president going after people for their freedom of speech is absolutely unheard of. Especially when you have the First Amendment into consideration. He has to know they’re protected by that, yes?
Then there’s the second guess, and this one’s more personal – Hunter Biden.
As you know, the president’s son has once again landed in legal hot water, particularly with documents indicating that Hunter tried to use his father’s own leverage to pressure a Chinese executive. Now, ol’ Joe has denied ever being there, but that hasn’t stopped many from taking to social media to provide their two cents on the matter.
Come to think of it, that’s even worse than going after “MAGA Republicans” in general, if only because that means the President is trying to cover up theories surrounding his son instead of letting him have his day in court. That means he’s working against the First Amendment for the sake of his own family.
We don’t know what the real reason is for the Biden administration going on an attack such as this. But I’m thankful that the federal judge working the case realizes the importance of free speech. It may not be what Biden and his family are hoping to hear, but it’s our God-given right and no one – not even the president – should be allowed to silence it. Period.
Michael Letts is the Founder, President, and CEO of InVest USA, a national grassroots non-profit organization that is helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs. He also has over 30 years of law enforcement experience under his belt, hence his pro-police stance for his brothers and sisters in blue.
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Full Text: Breitbart’s Emma-Jo Morris’s Opening Statement to Congress About Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop
Breitbart News Politics Editor Emma-Jo Morris denounced the “elaborate censorship conspiracy” to silence her 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop during testimony before the House Weaponization Committee on Thursday.
The following is the full text of Morris’ opening statement before the House Committee:
My name is Emma-Jo Morris. I am the Politics Editor at Breitbart News.
I am here today because I published a series of news stories three years ago, in October 2020, about Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop — also known as the “laptop from hell” — which is seen as some of the most scandalous reporting of the last decade.
What was more scandalous than the reporting itself though was the fact that it exposed the unholy alliance between the Intelligence Community, social media platforms, and legacy media outlets.
At the time, I was deputy politics editor at the New York Post. My reporting showed that, despite then-candidate Joe Biden’s repeated and furious denials, he was apparently involved in the foreign business deals of his family.
Over several days, just weeks before Americans would vote for their next president, I revealed verified authentic emails from the Biden scion’s hard drive showing Ukrainian business partners receiving leaks from the Obama White House, I documented an off-the-books meeting between then-Vice President Biden and a Ukrainian energy executive, and introduced the world to “the Big Guy,” who got action on a deal with CEFC China Energy Co.
The Post published exactly how the material for the reporting was obtained, even identifying the sources, as well as a federal subpoena showing the FBI was in possession of the material the story was based on, and had been since December of 2019.
But when the stories appeared on social media that morning — the venue where millions of Americans go to find their news, and editors to get their angles — within hours, the reporting was censored on all major platforms, on the basis of being called “hacked” or “Russian disinformation.”
Twitter refused to allow users to share the link to the stories, banned the links from being shared in private messages — a policy typically used to clamp down on child porn distribution — and locked the Post out of its verified account.
Facebook said it would curb distribution and reach of the links on its platform.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik; NY Post; BNN)
However, the stories were not based on “hacked materials,” nor were they “Russian disinformation.” And despite those claims appearing to come out of thin air at the time, we would eventually learn that they actually didn’t come out of thin air at all.
On October 19, five days after the Post first began publishing, Politico ran a story headlined, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
Politico printed a letter, completely uncritically, from veteran members of U.S. intelligence falsely claiming the Post exposé “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Most notable among the signatories of the letter were Jim Clapper, former DNI, and John Brennan, former CIA — despite having such damaged credibility following their participation in the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory.
A few days later, on October 22, when Biden appeared in the second presidential debate, and was confronted with the facts of the Post’s reporting, he said to Trump, “Fifty former national intelligence professionals said this: what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plot.”
But it was not.
Now, fast forward to this year, three years later.
Just last spring, House investigators revealed it was a call by now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell that prompted the spy letter published by Politico, which bypassed agency approval processes that would have been normally applied.
It is also now known that ahead of my reporting, federal agencies were priming social media companies to execute an operation to discredit it.
According to internal documents released by Elon Musk upon his acquisition of Twitter, the FBI and other intelligence community members essentially directed the platform’s censorship operation in part externally, by working with top management; in part internally, by social media companies hiring eye-popping numbers of agency-alumni.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger reported, based on documents he obtained from Musk, that “during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed” Twitter executives “to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation.” Feds arranged for Top Secret security clearances to be granted to Twitter management, and even had an encrypted messaging network set up, which they dubbed a “virtual war room.”
To this day, hundreds of people from the intelligence community work at social media companies.
Over the last few years, my reporting has been confirmed by virtually every mainstream news outlet, from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, to Politico. No one denies that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place.
This elaborate censorship conspiracy wasn’t because the information being reported on was false. It was because the information was true, and a threat to the power centers in this country.
What this relationship between U.S. government officials and American corporations represents is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment — the right to think, write, read, and say whatever we want — and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable, or as optional.
Breitbart News Politics Editor Emma-Jo Morris denounced the “elaborate censorship conspiracy” to silence her 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop during testimony before the House Weaponization Committee on Thursday.
The following is the full text of Morris’ opening statement before the House Committee:
My name is Emma-Jo Morris. I am the Politics Editor at Breitbart News.
I am here today because I published a series of news stories three years ago, in October 2020, about Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop — also known as the “laptop from hell” — which is seen as some of the most scandalous reporting of the last decade.
What was more scandalous than the reporting itself though was the fact that it exposed the unholy alliance between the Intelligence Community, social media platforms, and legacy media outlets.
At the time, I was deputy politics editor at the New York Post. My reporting showed that, despite then-candidate Joe Biden’s repeated and furious denials, he was apparently involved in the foreign business deals of his family.
Over several days, just weeks before Americans would vote for their next president, I revealed verified authentic emails from the Biden scion’s hard drive showing Ukrainian business partners receiving leaks from the Obama White House, I documented an off-the-books meeting between then-Vice President Biden and a Ukrainian energy executive, and introduced the world to “the Big Guy,” who got action on a deal with CEFC China Energy Co.
The Post published exactly how the material for the reporting was obtained, even identifying the sources, as well as a federal subpoena showing the FBI was in possession of the material the story was based on, and had been since December of 2019.
But when the stories appeared on social media that morning — the venue where millions of Americans go to find their news, and editors to get their angles — within hours, the reporting was censored on all major platforms, on the basis of being called “hacked” or “Russian disinformation.”
Twitter refused to allow users to share the link to the stories, banned the links from being shared in private messages — a policy typically used to clamp down on child porn distribution — and locked the Post out of its verified account.
Facebook said it would curb distribution and reach of the links on its platform.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik; NY Post; BNN)
However, the stories were not based on “hacked materials,” nor were they “Russian disinformation.” And despite those claims appearing to come out of thin air at the time, we would eventually learn that they actually didn’t come out of thin air at all.
On October 19, five days after the Post first began publishing, Politico ran a story headlined, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
Politico printed a letter, completely uncritically, from veteran members of U.S. intelligence falsely claiming the Post exposé “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Most notable among the signatories of the letter were Jim Clapper, former DNI, and John Brennan, former CIA — despite having such damaged credibility following their participation in the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory.
A few days later, on October 22, when Biden appeared in the second presidential debate, and was confronted with the facts of the Post’s reporting, he said to Trump, “Fifty former national intelligence professionals said this: what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plot.”
But it was not.
Now, fast forward to this year, three years later.
Just last spring, House investigators revealed it was a call by now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell that prompted the spy letter published by Politico, which bypassed agency approval processes that would have been normally applied.
It is also now known that ahead of my reporting, federal agencies were priming social media companies to execute an operation to discredit it.
According to internal documents released by Elon Musk upon his acquisition of Twitter, the FBI and other intelligence community members essentially directed the platform’s censorship operation in part externally, by working with top management; in part internally, by social media companies hiring eye-popping numbers of agency-alumni.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger reported, based on documents he obtained from Musk, that “during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed” Twitter executives “to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation.” Feds arranged for Top Secret security clearances to be granted to Twitter management, and even had an encrypted messaging network set up, which they dubbed a “virtual war room.”
To this day, hundreds of people from the intelligence community work at social media companies.
Over the last few years, my reporting has been confirmed by virtually every mainstream news outlet, from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, to Politico. No one denies that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place.
This elaborate censorship conspiracy wasn’t because the information being reported on was false. It was because the information was true, and a threat to the power centers in this country.
What this relationship between U.S. government officials and American corporations represents is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment — the right to think, write, read, and say whatever we want — and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable, or as optional.
Watch Live: Breitbart’s Emma-Jo Morris, RFK Jr. Testify on Govt, Big Tech Censorship
The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hear testimony Thursday, July 20, on censorship of Americans by the government and Big Tech.
“The hearing will examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans, the Missouri v. Biden case, and Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech,” the subcommittee announced.
Breitbart News’s Emma-Jo Morris will testify to the censorship of her reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” shortly before the 2020 presidential election:
Over the last few years, my reporting has been confirmed by virtually every mainstream news outlet, from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, to Politico. No one denies that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place.
This elaborate censorship conspiracy wasn’t because the information being reported on was false. It was because the information was true, and a threat to the power centers in this country.
What this relationship between U.S,government officials and American corporations represents is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment — the right to think, write, read, and say whatever we want — and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable, or as optional.
Multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and CBS admitted they had independently confirmed the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop well after the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. A 2022 TIPP poll reported 71% of Americans believe had the story not been suppressed, it would have changed the result of the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democrat nomination for president in 2024, and Louisiana Department of Justice Special Assistant Attorney General D. John Sauer will also testify at Thursday’s hearing.
Democrats tried to censor one of their own, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after his passionate opening statement on Thursday at a hearing on censorship at the House Weaponization Subcommittee.
Kennedy had just defended his record on racism and antisemitism, disputing claims by 102 Democrats in a letter that he had allegedly “spread vile and dangerous antisemitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories.”
He said that his remarks had been taken out of context, and noted his strong support for Israel. Waving the Democrats’ letter, “I know many of the people who wrote this letter. I don’t believe there’s a single person who signed this letter who believes I’m antisemitic. I do not believe that. There’s no evidence of that.”
He noted that he had been censored on social media platforms — not just on the topic of vaccines, but on ordinary issues.
House Committee on the JudiciaryFollowing his remarks, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who had used an earlier hearing to attack the practice of professional journalism itself, moved that the hearing be moved into “executive session,” ending the public testimony. She cited rule 11, section 2, of the House, which provides for an executive session if testimony “would tend to defame, degrade, or incriminate any person.” Republicans moved to table the motion.
Democrats then demanded a roll call vote, and used their votes to deliver short speeches, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) calling the committee, without irony, a “Soviet politburo,” as he voted to censor Kennedy.
“This is a hearing on censorship that began with an effort .. to censor Mr. Kennedy!” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) later exclaimed.
As the hearing continued, Democrats attacked Kennedy, with the minority party ranking member, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), accusing him of trying “to target the black community” with vaccine misinformation.
Breitbart News’ own political editor, Emma-Jo Morris, testified at the hearing about the censorship of her reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop:
House Committee on the Judiciary / YouTubeDemocrats tried to dispute whether the FBI had verified the authenticity of the laptop at the time of her reporting, when the agency had reached out to Twitter and to other social media platforms to warn them that such stories could be Russian disinformation (which it was not).
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 recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file
The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hear testimony Thursday, July 20, on censorship of Americans by the government and Big Tech.
“The hearing will examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans, the Missouri v. Biden case, and Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech,” the subcommittee announced.
Breitbart News’s Emma-Jo Morris will testify to the censorship of her reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” shortly before the 2020 presidential election:
Over the last few years, my reporting has been confirmed by virtually every mainstream news outlet, from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, to Politico. No one denies that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place.
This elaborate censorship conspiracy wasn’t because the information being reported on was false. It was because the information was true, and a threat to the power centers in this country.
What this relationship between U.S,government officials and American corporations represents is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment — the right to think, write, read, and say whatever we want — and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable, or as optional.
Multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and CBS admitted they had independently confirmed the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop well after the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. A 2022 TIPP poll reported 71% of Americans believe had the story not been suppressed, it would have changed the result of the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democrat nomination for president in 2024, and Louisiana Department of Justice Special Assistant Attorney General D. John Sauer will also testify at Thursday’s hearing.
Democrats tried to censor one of their own, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after his passionate opening statement on Thursday at a hearing on censorship at the House Weaponization Subcommittee.
Kennedy had just defended his record on racism and antisemitism, disputing claims by 102 Democrats in a letter that he had allegedly “spread vile and dangerous antisemitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories.”
He said that his remarks had been taken out of context, and noted his strong support for Israel. Waving the Democrats’ letter, “I know many of the people who wrote this letter. I don’t believe there’s a single person who signed this letter who believes I’m antisemitic. I do not believe that. There’s no evidence of that.”
He noted that he had been censored on social media platforms — not just on the topic of vaccines, but on ordinary issues.
House Committee on the JudiciaryFollowing his remarks, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who had used an earlier hearing to attack the practice of professional journalism itself, moved that the hearing be moved into “executive session,” ending the public testimony. She cited rule 11, section 2, of the House, which provides for an executive session if testimony “would tend to defame, degrade, or incriminate any person.” Republicans moved to table the motion.
Democrats then demanded a roll call vote, and used their votes to deliver short speeches, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) calling the committee, without irony, a “Soviet politburo,” as he voted to censor Kennedy.
“This is a hearing on censorship that began with an effort .. to censor Mr. Kennedy!” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) later exclaimed.
As the hearing continued, Democrats attacked Kennedy, with the minority party ranking member, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), accusing him of trying “to target the black community” with vaccine misinformation.
Breitbart News’ own political editor, Emma-Jo Morris, testified at the hearing about the censorship of her reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop:
House Committee on the Judiciary / YouTubeDemocrats tried to dispute whether the FBI had verified the authenticity of the laptop at the time of her reporting, when the agency had reached out to Twitter and to other social media platforms to warn them that such stories could be Russian disinformation (which it was not).
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 recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file
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