Bobby Burack
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Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson obtained internal documents that reveal the Biden administration pressured Twitter to ban him last year for questioning the government’s response to COVID-19.
Berenson posted the documents Friday, showing Twitter employees in April 2021 discussing a meeting with Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s COVID-19 response team. Slavitt called Berenson the “epicenter of disinformation.”
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
In a separate screenshot, a Twitter staffer asked if there were any “high-level takeaways from the meeting,” to which a colleague said the Biden administration wanted to know why the service had not yet banned Berenson:
To my old colleagues at @nytimes and elsewhere: I know ideology now trumps journalism for you.
But imagine what you’d say if you found proof the Trump WH had targeted you personally for a Twitter ban for your reporting. That’s what the Biden Administration did to me.
Not okay. pic.twitter.com/9kS23td68a
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 12, 2022
How is that for a pull-back the curtain moment? A high-ranking federal official had urged a private company to silence a pesky journalist.
For background: Twitter permanently suspended Berenson’s account on Aug. 28, 2021 then later reinstated him. Twitter decided the following tweet did not violate its guidelines as part of a settlement in Berenson’s lawsuit against the company:
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”
One would surmise this isn’t the first time the government has used its power to pressure a social media platform to remove an influential account that dissents against its rulings.
In May, we wrote a column documenting how the inner workings of social media are more damning than even skeptics allege.
If we were players of whataboutism, we’d ask how the media would handle a similar situation if the Trump administration tried to convince Twitter to ban, say, Maggie Haberman. But who has time for whataboutism?
In a conversation with the Daily Caller News Foundation, Berenson said these documents are proof the Biden administration sought to violate his First Amendment rights.
“I look forward to suing the administration in federal court,” Berenson concludes.
Remember, Biden is “defending democracy” when he uses the government to violate people’s Constitutional rights who disagree with his policies.
Biden doesn’t know what planet he’s on. Obama and his flunkies, Klein, Rice, Jarrett, etc are running the show. The hate America crowd.
And he will win. There’s precedent for this, not on social media, it with other companies/media.
Others that were banned need to follow suit after suit after suit……