Missouri AG calls out Biden over censorship ruling

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Monday excoriated the Biden administration for contesting a judicial order barring contact with social media companies to remove lawful content.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty on Monday denied an appeal seeking to upend his earlier order that prohibited the Department of Justice and key administration officials from communicating with the platforms to remove First Amendment-protected content. It does not prohibit the government from addressing illegal activity.

Bailey, who has brought the case, applauded Doughty's decision in an appearance on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show, saying "he's protecting the First Amendment."

"That's the whole point of this lawsuit is to preserve our right to free speech," he continued. "Certainly the founding fathers understood the value in allowing for dissent to be in the public domain, in the public square for free, fair, and open debate and that the people would come to consensus absent government censorship."

"And yet Biden has rejected those principles handed down to us by the founding fathers in the First Amendment," he asserted. "It has embraced a vast censorship enterprise, a relationship of coercion and collusion with big tech social media. And so the Court issued its injunction on July 4. What a great way to celebrate this nation's independence... by reaffirming our commitment to free speech."

He further pointed to the official government explanation as being rife with irony. The government contends that its censorship activities are necessary to combat the spread of misinformation.

"It's dripping with irony that Biden's excuse for censoring our free speech and violation of the First Amendment is that he wants to protect the rest of us from misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation," Bailey said. "[T]he crux of [the court order] is that the federal government cannot censor core political speech and any speech protected by the First Amendment."

"And so the Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal and an emergency request for stay demanding that the court reverse its decision or the federal government [will] suffer irreparable harm is what they said," Bailey went on. "And yet the Court pointed out today that the Department of Justice has presented no evidence or argument that any lawful communications are disrupted by the court order. The only thing that prohibits is unconstitutional behavior."

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.