WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Louisiana ruled Tuesday that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Dr. Anthony Fauci will have to turn over any emails they sent to social media companies about misinformation or the censorship of social media content.
The ruling is part of a lawsuit filed in May by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, accusing the Biden administration of working with social media companies to suppress free speech, particularly surrounding COVID-19 and elections.
For the past four months, the attorneys general and the White House have been arguing over which documents need to be produced in the lawsuit. Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, ruled that the Biden administration will have to turn over Jean-Pierre's and Fauci’s relevant emails in 21 days, over objections from the Department of Justice, which argued that turning over the documents would show internal communications.
“This Court believes Plaintiffs are entitled to external communications by Jean-Pierre and Dr. Fauci in their capacities as White House Press Secretary and Chief Medical Advisor to the President to third-party social media platforms,” Doughty wrote.
Neither the White House, nor a spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health responded to a request for comment.
The White House launched a campaign last year that aimed at spurring Facebook and other social media giants to do more to combat misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, a move that angered many on the political right.
Schmitt, who is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Missouri, has often used his role as Missouri attorney general to file lawsuits against the Biden administration around issues that resonate with his conservative base.
The issue of social media censorship has become a prominent focus for conservatives, particularly after Trump was banned from Twitter in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Some of Schmitt’s primary opponents violated the companies’ social media policies during the campaign. U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s Twitter account was suspended after she refused to delete a tweet about a transgender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania. A video made by U.S. Rep. Billy Long was taken off of YouTube because it contained claims that the 2020 Presidential Election was “stolen.”
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and its allies were dismissed by judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans.
Schmitt and Landry’s lawsuit focuses more heavily on how the social media companies handled claims about the origins of COVID-19 and their decision to limit the reach of an article about information found on a laptop that once belonged to President Donald Trump’s son, Hunter.
In a press release Tuesday, Schmitt’s office celebrated the ruling.
“The American people deserve answers on how the federal government has colluded with social media companies to censor free speech on these major platforms,” Schmitt wrote. “We will continue to fight to uncover more of this vast censorship enterprise.”
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