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Jonathan Turley

'How Do People Know the Truth?': Biden Unleashes Tirade Over Musk Restoring Free Speech Protections on Twitter

Monday November 7, 2022

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Elon Musk has not actually changed the “content moderation” policies at Twitter yet, but President Joe Biden went on a virtual rave on Friday over the prospect of free speech breaking out on a single social media site. As a type of censor-in-chief, Biden has led calls for censorship on social media, which have been largely heeded by companies like Facebook and Twitter. Now Biden is accusing Twitter of “spewing lies all across the world” by seeking to reduce one of the largest censorship systems in history. The President lamented that the influence of the media will be “de minimus.” He is a bit late on that front.

President Biden has previously accused social media companies of “killing people” by refusing to impose robust censorship over a wide range of subjects. Many of those banned or censored were doctors with opposing views on the data and the science related to the pandemic.

Some of those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
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EU Warns Musk Not to Restore Free Speech Protections After Calls from Clinton and Other Democratic Leaders

Friday November 4, 2022

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We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.

For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently repeated this call for global censorship at the United Nations to the applause of diplomats and media alike.

EU censors have assured Democratic leaders that they will not allow free speech to break out on Twitter regardless of the wishes of its owner and customers.
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Writers, Publishers and Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal in Latest Censorship Campaign

Monday October 31, 2022

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We have been discussing the rising support for censorship on the left in the last few years. Silencing opposing views has become an article of faith for many on the left, including leading Democratic leaders from President Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama. What is most distressing is how many journalists and writers have joined the call for censorship. However, even with this growing movement, the letter of hundreds of “literary figures” this week to Penguin Random House is chilling. The editors and writers call on the company to rescind a book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett because they disagree with her judicial philosophy. After all, why burn books when you can effectivelyban them?

The public letter entitled “We Dissent” makes the usual absurd protestation that, just because we are seeking to ban books of those with opposing views, we still “care deeply about freedom of speech.” They simply justify their anti-free speech position by insisting that any harm “in the form of censorship” is less than “the form of assault on inalienable human rights” in opposing abortion or other constitutional rights.

Yet, the letter is not simply dangerous. It is perfectly delusional. While calling for the book to be blocked, the writers bizarrely insist “we are not calling for censorship.”

While the letter has been described as signed by “literary figures,” it actually contains many who are loosely connected to the “broader literary community” like “Philip Tuley, Imam” and “Barbara Hirsch, Avid reader.” It also includes many who are simply identified by initials or first names like “Leslie” without any stated connection.

Nevertheless, there are many editors and publishing figures who list their companies (including HarperCollins, Random House and other companies) and university presses (including Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan Northwestern, Oxford) with their titles in calling for censorship. The list speaks loudly to why dissenting or conservative authors find it more difficult to publish today. These are editors who are publicly calling for banning the publication of those who hold opposing views from their own.
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'The Gates of Hell Opened': A Media Panic Ensues As Musk Takes Over Twitter and Fires Chief Censors

Saturday October 29, 2022

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Thursday night I wrote a column on the challenges faced by Elon Musk in taking over Twitter and suggested steps to “hit the ground running.” One of those obvious steps discussed in earlier columns was to fire CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde, the primary figures responsible for creating one of the largest censorship systems in history. He did so within minutes of taking over and their removal constitutes as singular advances in the cause of free speech around the world.
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Fauci and White House Officials Ordered to Testify in Social Media Censorship Case

Monday October 24, 2022

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There is an interesting development out of a case in Louisiana where a federal judge has ruled that Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House officials must testify in a case alleging a backchannel for censorship on social media. The complaint in Schmitt v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-1213 in the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana alleges that Facebook and Twitter coordinated their censorship programs with government officials. I have previously written about what some of us view as a “censorship by surrogate” system used on social media. This discovery could help understand some of those back channel contacts.

Judge Terry Doughty granted a request to require Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and others to sit under oath for up to seven hours each.

The First Amendment Rationale and Censorship Realities

As discussed earlier, social media companies have created the largest censorship system in history. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations.

The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.
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Will Musk 'End Twitter As We Know it'? I Sincerely Hope So

Friday October 14, 2022

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The news that Elon Musk wants to go forward with the purchase of Twitter has led to a virtual panic among media, political and academic figures worried that free speech could shortly break out on the social media platform. Former Politico magazine editor Garrett Graff summed up the collective vapors succinctly: “Be afraid, be actually afraid.”

I sincerely hope so.

While Musk had in recent months wavered on his purchase, he said last week that he wants to move forward with a $44 billion offer to buy the social media platform. On Thursday, the judge presiding over Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk for backing out of the original deal gave the world’s richest person until Oct. 28 to reach an agreement on the purchase.

Censorship culture threatens to limit free speech

The free speech community hopes that Musk is still committed to his stated commitment to return free speech protections to the social media giant. In the past 10 years, a censorship culture has not only become deeply embedded at Twitter but also on other social media platforms. The need for censored and limited speech has become an article of faith for many on the left.

I have long admitted to being an “internet originalist,” someone who viewed the internet as the greatest development for free speech since the invention of the printing press. However, the rapid erosion of free speech values – from our Congress to our campuses – has been alarming.

Led by President Joe Biden, Democratic leaders and media figures have demanded corporate censorship and even state censorship to curtail opposing views on issues ranging from climate change to election integrity to public health to gender identity. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, for example, declared, “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”
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The Golden Rule and the Hunter Biden Scandal: Three Questions Raised by the FBI Leak

Monday October 10, 2022

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President Biden’s hot mic moment during a visit to hurricane-stricken Florida — in which he muttered that “No one f–ks with a Biden” — left many people confused. His Sopranos-like warning might not deter developing hurricanes but it has succeeded for years in Washington as a kind of “Biden Golden Rule.” Neither prosecutors nor the press have seemed interested in pursuing allegations of criminal or corrupt practices by some members of the Biden family.

Now, after years of investigation, reports indicate that FBI agents are convinced ample evidence exists to charge the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun- and tax-related charges. Those charges (and a possible plea) may be the best-case scenario for the Bidens — and many others in Washington. Indeed, the reported narrow scope of a possible indictment is strikingly similar to what I previously described as the ideal “controlled demolition” of the Hunter Biden scandal.

Three questions immediately arise from this Justice Department leak, and the concern is that all three may be answered by the Biden Golden Rule:

For the Bidens, justice delayed is justice

The first question is why, in an investigation that began in 2018, the Justice Department only now believes it could charge over false statements on a gun registration form and on tax evasion. Both crimes were well established years ago.
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New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System

Monday September 26, 2022

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.

Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

"But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

"This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

"We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges."
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Durham: The FBI Had Danchenko on Payroll as An Informant During the Russian Collusion Investigation

Wednesday September 14, 2022

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Yesterday, a filing by Special Counsel John Durham revealed that Igor Danchenko, who worked as a key contributor to the discredited Steele dossier funded by the Clinton campaign, was later put on the FBI payroll as an informant. The disclosure rocked Washington and raised additional questions of the FBI’s eagerness to pursue any allegations against Donald Trump despite being warned that the dossier appeared to be a vehicle for Russian disinformation.

Danchenko is facing with five counts of lying to the bureau during that relationship. His trial is scheduled for next month in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

The filing states that “In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI. The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020.”

The news shocked many of us who have closely followed the Russian collusion controversy for years. The FBI showed a zeal to investigate Trump and his campaign that seemed to border on the blind obsessive. It was not simply with the Steele dossier. On the baseless Alfa Bank allegations (also pushed by Clinton campaign through friends at the FBI) the supervisory agent for the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Joe Pientka, sent a note to FBI special agent Curtis Heide, stating: “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”
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Twitter’s 'Tricky' Timing Problem: Lawsuit Reveals Back Channel with CDC to Coordinate Censorship

Wednesday August 24, 2022

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“Tricky.” Over the course of 110 pages in a federal complaint, that one descriptive word seemed to stand out among the exchanges between social media executives and public health officials on censoring public viewpoints. The exchange reveals long-suspected coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system.

Twitter just reportedly suspended another doctor who sought to raise concerns over Pfizer Covid records. Former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson is also suing Twitter over his suspension after raising dissenting views to the CDC.

In the meantime, Twitter is rolling out new procedures to combat “misinformation” in the upcoming elections — a move that has some of us skeptical.

The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media. The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.”

It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship existed. The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medical views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined by experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University).
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