The scandalous story of White House-directed censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, and new revelations from an ongoing lawsuit has brought even more damning details to light.
As Just the News reports, Alex Berenson, a former journalist with the New York Times, submitted an amended complaint in federal court that includes new details secured from X as well as from Congress, evidence he says supports his claims of First Amendment violations by the Biden administration.
It was last week that Berenson updated his filings in a lawsuit targeting President Joe Biden, several current and former administration officials, and two Pfizer executives over their involvement in social media content moderation during the pandemic.
Berenson asserts that based on new email evidence, it is clear that Facebook considered former White House COVID response coordinator Andy Slavitt as something of an “intermediary” with the administration, despite his purported resignation from his prior role.
This stands in contrast to claims made by Slavitt's attorneys suggesting that his engagement with Facebook about alleged misinformation promulgated by Berenson was done as a private citizen.
The new details included in his amended complaint, Berenson says, are strong enough to meet the Supreme Court's high standards in this realm, recently articulated in its denial of a preliminary injunction in the related Murthy v. Missouri case.
Berenson's updated complaint says, “Slavitt was at the center of the conspiracy,” to have the journalist removed from social media platforms, and he “remained close” to then-Biden chief of staff Ron Klain, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
Email messages detail Slavitt's discussions with Metal President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, both before and after the former departed the White House.
Clegg wrote, “Just got off hour long call with Andy Slavitt,” who was apparently “outraged” by Facebook's decision not to remove a post likening COVID-19 vaccines to asbestos.
According to Berenson's complaint, Slavitt endeavored to convey the impression that he was speaking on behalf of the White House despite having left his official role there.
Berenson now says, “Twitter's closest competitor viewed Slavitt as speaking for the government at the same time he was pressuring Twitter over me,” adding that “Timing is not a problem” as it was in the Murthy case, in that “Twitter took no public action against me before the federal government began pressuring it.”
Berenson's revelations come just days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the Biden White House exerted pressure on Facebook to censor COVID-19 posts, as the New York Post explained.
Zuckerberg noted that the Biden team even coerced the removal of material that included “humor and satire,” and Facebook's compliance with those directives is something for which the tech mogul is now sorry.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today,” but whether this spate of mea culpa will coincide with a win for Berenson, only time will tell.
