A U.S. District Court judge granted an injunction Tuesday stopping the Joe Biden administration from working with social media companies to censor information about elections, COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other “conservative” speech. Similarly, in 2022, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer worked with Joe Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, to “manipulate elections,” Trump attorney Christina Bobb tweeted last December. The Joe Biden administration immediately filed a notice of appeal.
In his 155-page opinion, Judge Terry Doughty observed that the censorship was directed at conservatives.
“It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature,” he said. “This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.”
The attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri brought the lawsuit against the federal government last year, alleging the collusion to ban “misinformation” constituted censorship. Plaintiffs included the Alliance Defending Freedom and Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit. A lengthy list of government agencies and officials were named in the injunction, including the FBI, DOJ, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State.
Doughty denounced the censorship.
“[T]he evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” he said. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants.”
Doughty cited examples of censorship, such as suppression of the “Great Barrington Declaration” (GBD). The GBD was an open letter from infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists issued in 2020 that expressed “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”
Doughty said, “In October 2020, Google de-boosted the search results for the GBD so that when Google users googled ‘Great Barrington Declaration,’ they would be diverted to articles critical of the GBD, and not to the GBD itself. Reddit removed links to the GBD.”
The complaint listed nine areas where information was suppressed due to the collusion:
(1) [S]uppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election; (2) suppressing speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin; (3) suppressing speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns; (4) suppressing speech about the efficiency of COVID-19 vaccines; (5) suppressing speech about election integrity in the 2020 presidential election; (6) suppressing speech about the security of voting by mail; (7) suppressing parody content about Defendants; (8) suppressing negative posts about the economy; and (9) suppressing negative posts about President Biden.
Doughty allowed a few exceptions to the ban on “engaging in communication of any kind” with social media companies and Big Tech, which included informing social media companies of postings involving criminal activity and conspiracies and notifying social media firms of national security threats and other threats posted on platforms.
Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted after hearing Doughty’s opinion denouncing the Joe Biden administration’s behavior, “Extremely concerning.” In response to news that the State Department canceled its regular Wednesday meeting with Facebook after learning of the injunction, Musk tweeted, “I wonder what goes on at the “regular Wednesday meeting.”
Bobb tweeted documents from CISA revealing Richer’s role in the censorship. They were marked FOUO, which means “For Official Use Only,” a designation used to protect unclassified information from being released to the public. The documents contained minutes from a meeting of the “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation & Disinformation Subcommittee” of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee and are not on the CISA website.
The meeting minutes stated that Richer (pictured above) told the subcommittee about instances he claimed were “media disinformation” regarding elections in Maricopa County, and he expressed his concern that “all outlets are not held to the same journalistic standards.” One incident he cited was a photo tweeted of “an election management server room” that implied that a server there was connected to the internet. Richer said the claim was “easily disproved.” He did not explain how it was conclusively disproved, merely stating that the server was “air gapped, only accessible to three people, and hard wired without internet connection.”
The minutes also said, “Mr. Richer cautioned that the federal government cannot stay silent and identified a void in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election that allowed false information to circulate unchecked.” Richer complained about receiving numerous public records requests related to the election. He said it jumped from 30-40 requests in 2019 to over 350 in 2021.
In a report entitled “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation,” CISA included a quote from Richer. He said, “Responding to misinformation is my day job. My night job is running elections.”
The Arizona Sun Times spoke with Mike Benz, executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department diplomat responsible for formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters.
He said, “CISA tried to turn the state secretaries of state into social media censorship cells that could instantly kill any story going viral on social media in any swing state.” Not only was Richer brought in to assist with this effort, but Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates was too, he said.
Benz has documentation showing their connections to the federal effort.
“The federal coordination allowed for all that state coordination,” he said.
“CISA had a rapid-response team that could instantly get the tech companies to kill certain topics,” he went on.
The executive director said they pre-censored discussion that predicted the possibility of election fraud.
Benz explained that the effort grew out of a domestic misinformation switchboard that CISA founded, the Center for Information Security, intended to combat Russiagate. He said that after that scandal died down, CISA switched the focus to domestic issues.
Richer is closely associated with Chris Krebs, who served as director of CISA until President Donald Trump fired him in 2020 for denying there was election fraud. In a lengthy tweet thread from October 2022, Krebs said his first concern about the 2022 election was “continued efforts to delegitimize 2020 election,” and said the “way to counter” it was “more election officials like @stephen_richer.” He added, “political leaders should loudly reject those in their party that trade on stolen election claims.”
Krebs praised a “substantive/dismantling response” by Richer claiming that former Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem’s concerns about election fraud were “performative garbage.” He retweeted Richer stating, “there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state…”
Krebs and Richer participated in a panel discussion on misinformation where Krebs called for disbarring lawyers involved in litigation, contending there was election fraud. Both discussed their concerns about whether the First Amendment was still relevant in the digital age due to misinformation.
So how do we counter? First, we need more election officials like @stephen_richer – the most transparent election official around. His constant briefings and community engagement removes opportunity space for disinfo spreaders by shining light throughout the process.
— Chris Krebs (@C_C_Krebs) October 7, 2022
Doughty denied the plaintiffs’ request to certify the complaint as a class-action lawsuit. Richer created a PAC to support GOP election-fraud deniers in the fall of 2021.
– – –
Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Stephen Richer” by Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
