Judicial Watch sues California for allegedly pushing YouTube to censor video

Judicial Watch on Thursday announced a suit against the California secretary of state for allegedly pushing social media giant YouTube to censor a video on election integrity that the group published.

The suit alleges that the California Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC), which Secretary of State Shirley Weber oversees, caused YouTube to remove the video. Judicial Watch contends that, in so doing, the state violated the group's First Amendment rights.

On Sept. 20, 2022 Judicial Watch posted a video featuring group President Tom Fitton discussing the vote-by-mail process and highlighting security risks and other complications in voting systems, the suit noted.

The video, titled "**ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS** Dirty Voter Rolls, Ballot Harvesting & Mail-in-Voting Risks!" was removed on Sept. 25, 2022. 

The suit purports to reveal communications between OEC Social Media Coordinator Akilah Jones and Google/YouTube representative Andrea Holtermann in which the California state employee reports the Judicial Watch video and Holtermann confirms its removal from the platform.

The California Secretary of State's office said it did not comment on pending litigation.

"Smoking gun documents show California government officials, who were being advised by the Biden campaign PR operation, caused YouTube to censor a key Judicial Watch video just before the 2020 election," Fitton said.

"This egregious government censorship and election interference violated Judicial Watch’s civil rights, and our lawsuit seeks to stop and expose the growing corruption of leftist government officials colluding with Big Tech allies to attack the free speech rights of Americans," he concluded.