After journalist and author Alex Berenson sued Twitter over being banned regarding COVID remarks, he was reinstated with Twitter acknowledging that it should not have banned him. But as we reported at the time, he threw out a tantalizing tidbit about the “pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter” to suspend him. That even piqued the interest of Elon Musk, who wanted to know what those pressures were.
Now we may know at least part of what he was talking about.
Berenson is now highlighting documents that came out in the suit against Twitter that he says show that the Biden White House demanded in private communications with Twitter that they ban him months before he was banned. He’s now alleging a First Amendment violation by the White House, that state action was involved in his banning.
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
He explains:
In a White House meeting in April 2021, four months before Twitter suspended my account, the company faced “one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” a Twitter employee wrote.
The employee recounted the meeting discussion afterwards on Twitter’s internal Slack messaging system. The message, and others, make clear that top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.
— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) August 12, 2022
While Twitter is a private company and can ban anyone if the government is involved in get him banned that would potentially raise a First Amendment problem.
— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) August 12, 2022
Instead, top officials targeted me personally.
Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s Covid response team, complained specifically about me, according to a Twitter employee in another Slack conversation discussing the White House meeting.
“They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson,” the employee wrote. “Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Berenson notes that Twitter at the time of the pressure in April said that he wasn’t in violation of any of their rules.
But then, after Joe Biden publicly decried social media for not clamping down hard enough on COVID “misinformation” and accused social media of being responsible for “killing people,” Berenson said he was suspended for the first time within hours of Biden’s comments. He was banned in August 2021 until he was reinstated last month.
Berenson also says that “other reporters” asked Twitter to take action against him and he said that he would report on those in the future.
Berenson’s tweet promises a soon-to-come lawsuit against Biden and Slavitt.
This of course goes beyond just Berenson though as to the nature of the relationship between the White House and Twitter, who else might have been targeted, or what other things they may have attempted to influence.
Chief Data Analyst and founder of Rational Ground, Justin Hart said that the “data viz” being referred to might be one that included both him and Elon Musk.
Wow. This is big. The visualization that Slavitt was referring to was probably the MIT web project from summer of 2020. I’m there as well as El Gato. pic.twitter.com/DZeMTpZiLu
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) August 12, 2022
https://t.co/en0QsENL5c pic.twitter.com/DzqUMOUvUF
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) August 12, 2022
Now that sounds like that’s going to be a fascinating lawsuit and imagine all the interesting information and hidden conversations that may come out as a result of that suit.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member