Louisiana, Missouri AGs file suit against Biden admin officials for 'colluding' with Big Tech

Two states with GOP leaders filed suit against several Biden administration officials whom whom the argue "pressured and colluded" with Big Tech media companies to suppress information related to the Hunter Biden laptop story, in addition to the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and security of voting via mail during the pandemic.

Among them are President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is Biden's top medical adviser.

The suits were filed Thursday by Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The suit alleges the officials worked with social media companies Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor information that was not to their political advantage.

The suit also names newly appointed leader of the Department of Homeland Security's "Disinformation Governance Board" Nina Jankowicz.

Jankowicz has faced criticism since her recent appointment for past social media postings including at least one that denied  the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop and dismissed it as Russian disinformation.

"Notoriously, social-media platforms aggressively censored core political speech by then-President Trump and the Trump campaign raising concerns about the security of voting by mail in the run-up to the November 2020 presidential election," reads the suit, which adds that the defendants allegedly "coerced, threatened, and pressured social media platforms to censor disfavored speakers and viewpoints by using threats of adverse government action."

The suit – which also names DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Center for Disease Control, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Jen Easterly who heads up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – also asks the court to find the administration guilty of  violating the First Amendment and exceeding its statuary authority.

The attorneys general argue they are trying to prevent officials from continuing to suppress free speech.

"Big Tech has become an extension of Biden’s Big Government, and neither are protecting the freedoms of Americans; rather, they are suppressing truth and demonizing those who think differently," Landry says.

Schmitt told Fox News the "Biden Administration has been engaged in a pernicious campaign to both pressure social media giants to censor and suppress speech and work directly with those platforms to achieve that censorship in a misguided and Orwellian campaign against "misinformation.'"