Judges Question Gov’t-Big Tech Collusion: ‘Unsubtle Strong-Arming’

August 11th, 2023 5:37 PM

The Biden administration’s shady collusion with Big Tech is like something from an old mafia movie, and several judges on a federal appeals court are very skeptical.

A federal appeals court judge compared the censorship relationship between Big Tech and the Biden administration to "movies that we see with the mob"  during oral arguments for the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit against the Biden administration Thursday, according to The Daily Caller. The ongoing lawsuit has raised serious questions about the government’s behind-the-scenes work to quash free speech, leaving the three judges on the panel highly critical of the Biden administration. One judge even slammed the government’s “unsubtle strong-arming” of tech companies.

“In these movies that we see with the mob … they don’t say and spell out things, but they have these ongoing relationships,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod said. “They never actually say ‘go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence.’ But everybody just knows.” She added, “I’m certainly not equating the federal government with anybody in illegal organized crime but there are certain relationships that people know things without always saying the ‘or else.’”

Elrod also pointed out that the federal government’s complaints to and demands from tech companies are like “a supervisor complaining about a worker…It’s like ‘jump’ and ‘how high?'” Judges Edith Brown Clement and Don R. Willett also expressed concerns, The Daily Caller reported.

The federal government operates “out of the public eye,” Willett stated, using “unsubtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats.” He sarcastically summarized the Biden administration’s tactics, “That’s a really nice social media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty had issued an injunction restricting government-tech censorship coordination based on Missouri v. Biden. But the Biden administration obtained a temporary stay from the Fifth Circuit Court.

The case, brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general, has uncovered what Doughty called “a vast censorship regime” allegedly orchestrated by the Biden administration to censor speech online. The lawsuit cited exclusive research from MRC Free Speech America using our exclusive CensorTrack.org database. 

Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech and government agencies be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.