Alex Berenson was a journalist and an author who sued Twitter after he was banned for making COVID comments. Twitter then reinstated Berenson with acknowledgment from the company that it shouldn’t have banned him. But as we reported at the time, he threw out a tantalizing tidbit about the “pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter” to suspend him. Elon Musk was intrigued by the information and wanted to find out what they were.
At least we now have a partial understanding of what he meant.
Berenson highlights documents in his suit against Twitter. These documents, he claims, show that Biden White House asked in private communication with Twitter to ban Berenson from Twitter months before the ban was implemented. He’s now alleging a First Amendment violation by the White House, that state action was involved in his banning.
My new Stack was based on months-old White House demands that Twitter ban me.
It is a state action, and it violates my First Amendment rights.
Berenson V. Biden (and Slavitt), soon coming to a federal Court near you. https://t.co/IVBWspnKoo
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 12, 2022
He explains:
In a White House meeting in April 2021, four months before Twitter suspended my account, the company faced “one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” a Twitter employee wrote.
The employee recounted the meeting discussion afterwards on Twitter’s internal Slack messaging system. These messages, along with others, made it very clear that high-ranking federal officials were specifically targeting me, which could have violated my First Amendment right of free speech.
— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) August 12, 2022
Twitter is an open-source platform that can ban anybody, but the government could be involved to get him banned. That would raise concerns about First Amendment rights.
— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) August 12, 2022
Top officials instead chose to target me directly.
Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s Covid response team, complained specifically about me, according to a Twitter employee in another Slack conversation discussing the White House meeting.
“They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson,” the employee wrote. “Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Berenson notes that Twitter at the time of the pressure in April said that he wasn’t in violation of any of their rules.
But then, after Joe Biden publicly decried social media for not clamping down hard enough on COVID “misinformation” and accused social media of being responsible for “killing people,” Berenson said he was suspended for the first time within hours of Biden’s comments. From August 2021, he was expelled until he was reinstated in the last month.
Berenson also says that “other reporters” asked Twitter to take action against him and he said that he would report on those in the future.
Berenson’s tweet promises a soon-to-come lawsuit against Biden and Slavitt.
It goes far beyond Berenson, however, as it relates to Twitter’s relationship with the White House. Who else could have been targeted? What other items might they have tried to influence?
Chief Data Analyst and founder of Rational Ground, Justin Hart said that the “data viz” being referred to might be one that included both him and Elon Musk.
Wow. It’s huge. Slavitt probably meant the MIT web project in summer 2020. I’m there as well as El Gato. pic.twitter.com/DZeMTpZiLu
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) August 12, 2022
https://t.co/en0QsENL5c pic.twitter.com/DzqUMOUvUF
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) August 12, 2022
Now that sounds like that’s going to be a fascinating lawsuit and imagine all the interesting information and hidden conversations that may come out as a result of that suit.
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