We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Joshinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the
premium version of our website over at the Federalist dot com as well. We're
joined today by one of our favorite reporters in the business. That would be
Margo Cleveland, who is an attorney. She is with the New Civil Liberties
Alliance and is representing The Federalist and the Daily Wire in such an important case
that we are going to break down. First, Margo, thank you so
much for joining the show. Thanks so much, Emily, you are a
busy woman. First, Margo, just I want to ask how you do
it. You do so much work, and I don't know how you keep
track of everything. I have not it's everywhere to keep track, and I
think my brain just does not stop. And I love this. I love
what I'm doing. I love the law, and I love breaking down and
telling stories to the public, which doesn't often get that from the so called
mainstream media. You know, I think, and this is this case is
such a good example because so much of the work that you do is focused
on abuses by the government that in other news cycles and previous versions of the
media and previous eras in American politics, would be the top story on the
nightly news, it would be the headline in American newspapers. Not to say
the media has always been perfect, but these are huge stories. And so
speaking of these huge stories that you're working on, Margo, we mentioned that
you're an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance. They do such fantastic work.
They've represented the Federalists before, and you guys are representing the Federalist again
in this incredibly important suit that was filed in the Eastern District of Texas.
If I'm not in, Margo, you are a legal person, I am
not, and that will be very clear as we start this conversation. But
this was filed on behalf of NCLA, filed this on behalf of Federalist Daily
Wire in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. And man,
is this an important one huge news that this lawsuit was filed. The
State of Texas is joining in a lawsuit, Margo, can you just do
a basic breakdown, you know, the elevator pitch for what's being argued in
this case. Absolutely, so I'm going to give a basic breakdown, but
the facts behind what is going on are so complex and convoluted that that's going
to take a little bit more. But the basically breakdown is, our State
Department, with our tax dollars, has been funding helping the development of promoting
marketing, acting as a sales company to market censorship technology to big tech,
to the social media companies, to the web browsers. And this censorship technology
is designed to silence the speech of ordinary Americans but also us and it's the
State Department that is doing this. Its authority is limited to foreign affairs,
but they're not looking at foreign affairs. They are looking at anything that involves
what they call misinformation, disinformation or mail information, which Americans are now wise
enough post COVID to know means anything that the government does not want us to
know. So the Federalists and the Daily Wire are making several different types of
arguments, starting with the First Amendment, which protects the right to the press
and the right to free speech, and it protects us from the government abridging
those rights. And then it also is highlighting how the State Department is acting
ultra virus, which means beyond their authority. Our State Department is supposed to
be dealing with foreign issues, not that there's somebody talking about COVID spreading from
a li in China. It's a tweet from Molly Hemingway that Vladimir Putin sent
her and said, please Molly post this information. And that's why it's so
important, Margot for the State Department to be on top of this. It's
just nuts. And you'd think that the general public would care. You would
think that the press would care. I think that you have a segment of
the press who thinks that it will never come to them. It's just those
other people that are being targeted. One that's not going to happen. Two,
you should care that these other people are targeted. The First Amendment is
designed to protect the press, and the State Department has so crossed the line
it has to be stopped. And yeah, I want to read from the
NCLA press release here because you know this is, to your point, convoluted,
and I'm excited. I know you've been neck deep in this, just
buried in all of these wonderful details, which are I think, you know,
we can get into this intentionally convoluted. But the way I really like
the way the press release puts it, they say the State Department uses its
Global Engagement Center, So that's the GEC to finance the development and promotion of
censorship technology and enterprises, including NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index. These government
funded and government promoted censorship technologies and enterprises target many conservative media outlets, including
The Daily Wire and The Federalist. These organizations create blacklists to discredit and demonetize
American media outlets they brand quote risky or unreliable, aiming to redirect advertiser money
and audiences to outlets that publish favorite viewpoints. So, Margo, correct me
if my interpretation of this is wrong. But you know, we've seen from
reporting from people like yourself and Gabe Kaminski who's been on top of the story,
that news Guard and the GDI, which are funded by the GEC.
So many acronyms, but these two groups are getting a lot of their funding,
if not most of their funding, from the State Department, and what
they do is consistently down rank so they credential you know, let's say leftist
sites, corporate media, regime friendly media, and downgrade their critics which often
to be often happen to be conservative. And they do this with our tax
payer money that was given to them by the State Department. So with news
Guard, I think that more of their funding is coming from the Department of
Defense than from the State Department. Sure, but that we have still NewsGuard
being promoted, marketed. All of that is still coming from the State Department.
I don't know where also getting their money from. They are selling licenses,
but you're seeing news releases coming out that NewsGuard is entering into contracts with
other governments as well. But the lawsuit isn't focusing on NewsGuard and GDI,
even though those are two examples, and this kind of takes us a step
back to what was GEC doing. There were over three hundred and sixty five
different tools or technologies that the State Department tested. So the REMS and NewsGuard
and GDI are featured here is we know those are two of them, and
we know that they blacklisted the plaintiffs, But how many of those other three
hundred and sixty five tools and technologies, we're doing the same thing, or
maybe something worse. We do not know that because the State Department doesn't tell
us what they're doing, but we do have enough open source information that shows
the State Department is using government funds to help promote and develop not technology that
is limited to foreign affairs, but that is right in the marketplace of American
press and American ideas. And that is what the focus is on in this
lawsuit, not what these other enterprises are doing. It's that the State Department
wants that done and it's helping that be done well. And maybe this is
a good place, Margo, if you can, you know, do the
we I imagine you know, some law schools force people to do. And
you know, if you are the State Department and you are defending these practices,
you know, what is there? What's their argument? You know,
obviously this was just filed, so we haven't seen any sort of formal response,
But what is their argument as it's been presented from the press, from
their own representatives over the course of the last year or so, as some
of these issues have come to the fore, Why do they think it's important
for them to be engaged in this? So I think we're going to see
several different points that the State Department does. I think you're going to have
them actually claim oh no, no, no, no, we don't do
this, And that's going to be a hard, hard argument to make given
that the Open Source Information them on video talking about this these grants, So
they do. I think that you're also going to have a pivot where they
change any discussion about the American press to foreign disinformation. So if you pose
a question about what is the State Department doing funding the censorship of the American
press, the State Department doesn't do that. We are very concerned though,
with foreign influence, just as we saw in the twenty twenty election that caused
the insurrection, you're going to have it completely pivoted to a non sequit or
something that has nothing to do with this case. The State Department understandably is
concerned when you have foreign propaganda. When you have and this is where we
need to go back to the history, when you have foreign terrorists in Hamas,
think about Hamas spreading lies, the State Department should be concerned about that.
But that's not what it ended up doing. It ended up using that
to open the door to look at anything it thinks to harms Americans' interests in
the State Department's own view. So you saw that with COVID, they literally
helped co sponsor an event on technology to counter COVID disinformation. And now we
know who was peddling the COVID disinformation, our government. So that's I guess
one of the ironies here. It isn't it's just the irony and just the
HUTSPA for the government to think it has the ability to decide what is disinformation
or misinformation or mail information. We actually have the government admitting that true information
can be disinformation misinformation in their guys and under their eyes. So from a
legal perspective, I expect the State Department to argue that this is not us.
This is third parties that are doing that what they are arguing in the
Missouri versus Biden case that's before the Supreme Court. But this case is very
different. We are not arguing the State Department is responsible for what these third
parties did. The argument is very clear the State Department bridged the First Amendment
rights of the Daily Wire and the federalists by what the State Department did.
When the State Department funded the development of censorship technology. The State Department abridged
the plaintiff's First Amendment rights When the State Department created a platform technology that was
designed for the government and the military and put over three hundred different technologies on
it that it that it explained how it worked, and then went to the
private sector and invited big tech to come on to this government platform and to
test the technology to see how they could use it for their quote needs.
The State Department abridged the First Amendment rights of the Daily Wire and the Federalist.
It's all about what the State Department did, which was abuse its power,
act outside of its authority and abridge the First Amendment. The watched aud
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you know, you mentioned the history of this too. I'm curious, not
just I think this is probably related. There's the history of the government's maybe
similar tempts that we've seen from as you mentioned with NewsGuard the Pentagon, but
in this case we're focused on the State Department legal encroachments. Are any legal
maybe skirmishes that have happened in the past over State Department censorship, I'd be
curious if you haven't fallen that. But also that question, that legal question
of censorship technologies, as we're digging into, you know, the State Department
knowingly abridging the speech rights of the Federalists and the Daily Wire, I imagine
that pertains to, you know, the fundamental nature of these technologies as being
for the purpose of censorship. So could you get into Marco just a little
bit about why that is. Ultimately, you know the essence of what the
State Department was doing is it is essentially about censorship when it comes to these
technologies. Sure, so all you have to do is look at the GEC
web page, listen to some of their presentations, and look at how they
describe the technology. Now, they don't call it censorship technology. They call
it technology to fight just information misinformation. So what you need to do is
look at it. Okay, how do you fight it? And again the
State Department tells us this when they list the types of technology that are available.
They have social listening technology that what it does is it looks for what
people are talking about on social media to figure out what these topics are.
Well, why are you listening to what people are talking about? Why you
the State Department do you care? Well they should care if they're talking about
terrorism. They shouldn't care if you are talking about COVID, And we're seeing
what the technology was designed to do was to monitor what people are talking about.
They also are looking at these rating organizations, and the State Department considers
that helpful to fight disinformation and misinformation. So the two that we know of,
and there probably are more, but we know of NewsGuard and we know
of Global Disinformation Index. So what is the purpose of those organizations? They
tell us themselves. It is to take money from what they call fake news
or risky outlets or unreliable outlets, and to shut down the flow of money
so that it can be redirected to what they call reliable outlets. So how
is that anything more than the censorship of speech? They are abridging the right
of the press by the State Department saying here, these are technologies to do
what you need to do, which is to blacklist, to censor, to
silence speech that we the government do not think is helpful. And how has
this harmed the Federalist and the Daily Wire. I mean, it sounds like
such an obvious question, but you've been working on this again for a while.
What are the sort of material consequences of the scheme? Right? So,
the scheme broadly is designed to starve media outlets, to starve them.
So, but this lawsuit is not seeking money, and it's not targeted again
at those who are doing that. What the lawsuit is seeking is the State
Department to stop their unconstitutional conduct. One thing that we can't know is one
thing that we cannot know is exactly the extent of this. We don't know
what all this technology did. We don't know if the State Department was helping
build algorithms in which when people do searches, they can't discover the articles that
are contrary to governments, right, think, we don't know if it automatically
will trigger the down ranking of certain publications. So there's a lot that discovery
needs to show. But we do know that the State Department is abridging the
First Amendment by doing any of this. Yeah, and did you like?
I mean, I actually don't know if there's a good answer to this question.
Are there previous instances or legal skirmishes with the State Department specifically, or
is there precedent when it comes to the government more generally. That's salient here,
sure. So the one case where the State Department was sued was actually
the Missouri versus Biden case. And in that case, even though the lower
courts held that the individual plaintiffs in the states had proven for a preliminary injunction
stage a violation of their rights, they said that there wasn't enough evidence that
the State Department was involved in causing the private censorship of speech. So in
that case, the State Department actually got tossed out. But that case,
again was looking at the transition from the government asking censorship of individual posts,
which is a very different case than what we have here. In this case,
it is looking at the State Department and what the State Department did in
their censorship scheme. And I call it a censorship scheme because there are so
many components to it. It would take me three sentences to describe it.
But the funding, the marketing, the promotion, the assistance, all of
that together is very different. And what you need to kind of look back
it is at the bottom line, it's the First Amendment. The First Amendment
tells the government it cannot abridge freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
A bridge is to lessen, to lower, and it's right there in the
Constitution. It's clear. There are other cases that talk about the government's responsibility
for harming the press by limiting the reach of the press. So for instance,
tax dollars, where excuse me, a tax system which was taxing the
press was an abridgment of the press where it was targeted only at the press
as opposed to other outsiders. Or for instance, where you had local officials
trying to prevent the publication of a book or the promotion of let's say some
illicit types of advertisement. The thing is, though there isn't a case that
is all squares here for the very simple reason that the government has never done
something this outrageous before. And that's why I keep coming back to it's right
there in the First Amendment. They shan't abridge the right to freedom of speech
or freedom of the press. We have lots of precedent out there that shows
in abridgment has occurred when it has been something so minor. But here we
have a entire State Department together combined to try to destroy speech and the press.
And I'm sure they'll argue, you know, we're not abridging the speech
we are. You know there's no speech that's you know that nobody is saying
Federalist or Daily Wire can't write X, Y and z. Of course we
know that's not exactly what's happening. So could you speak to that a little
bit, Margo. You know, if the State Apartment comes back and says
they're allowed to say whatever they want, we're not saying, you know,
they can't say whatever. You speak to that a little bit, sure.
So first, the word a bridge does not say you shall not completely silence
the press, you shall not make it illegal to speak. It says a
bridge, and again that can be something that is very very broad to a
bridge, and in case law has shown it doesn't have to be a huge
abridgment, such as when we have cases of tax dollars. But the other
part is there is no difference between the State Department going to social media saying
these companies are blacklisted and you should not publish, promote, allow web browser
searches to give high rankings to that. There's no difference between that and the
government helping the technology to be developed, funding it, and or taking the
technology and going to Google and saying this technology will help you prevent disinformation.
It's the same thing. The government does not have to stick a sop in
the figureative mouth to silence the press. It doesn't have to make the internet
illegal to the federalist to a bridge speech. So you're absolutely right, that's
what we're going to see from the State Department is going to be completely disingenuous.
They would not have undertaken this scheme if that was not their goal.
And then you have the added point that the State Department has no business doing
anything about the American press anyway. So you also have the fact that the
State Department is going much beyond its authority when it is doing any of this
promotion in the United States that targets the American press, and Margo, you
mentioned Missouri Vie Biden and some of the key differences between this and Missouri v.
Biden. Could you get a little bit more go into that a little
bit more, and maybe just for people who have, you know, in
all of the alphabet soup of the last few years when it comes to following
government censorship, maybe people who have lost track of missourifi Biden or haven'tdug too
deeply into it, could you just give a sort of overview of what that
case is doing and then how it's different from this one. Absolutely, And
first off, just because I'm saying this is different than for Missouri versus Biden,
I am not in any way saying that that case is not usually important.
It's just attacking two different parts of the censorship industrial complex. So Missouri
versus. Biden, which I am still calling it that at the Supreme Court
now it's called Murphy versus Missouri. They switched the names because of who lost
below. But in that case, the lawsuit was brought against, as you
said, the alphabet soup of federal agency. So you had the FBI involve,
you had the CDC involved, you had the CISC involved. So I
want to say there must have been up, you know, five to ten
different federal agencies that were all working with social media companies and likely other tech
companies such as Google or Microsoft, those who have the browsers. And what
they were doing is they were passing off and triggering the censorship of specific speech
and specific people. And it would have been in maybe spreadsheets or emails where
they said that this should be taken down, that should be taken down.
So that is a huge problems and the First Amendment absolutely prohibits that too,
because it wasn't them just saying hey, would you mind, which, by
itself, the government should not be doing. And depending on how they did
it, it could be a violation. But here or in miserveri versus fiety,
it wasn't merely oh this is wrong. It was constant pressure, ordination,
constant threats. So in many ways, the government violated the First Amendment
by causing these third parties to quiet individual speakers, individual tweets, individual posts,
individual articles. And we're seeing more and more of that as the House
is actually doing investigations on it. In this case, it is only against
the State Department. The State Department, unlike the FBI and the CDC,
who have some authority nationally, the State Department's reach is only by statute for
an affair. So right there, we've got one difference. Secondly, we
are not talking about holding the State Department liable for what third parties posted.
We're talking about the State Department abridging the First Amendment rights by their own conduct
and their own funding, and their own promotion and their own development of this
censorship technology. Third what we're looking at here is how the State Department and
gave government resources to private companies by virtue of either funding grants or by giving
them access to this government platform and all of this government research on these technologies
that help to quiet speech. So they are both horrendous First Amendment violations,
and the NCLA, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, is representing plaintiffs in both
cases. It is just that the cases are distinct from each other and present
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winding down here, maybe you could give us sort of a thirty thousand foot
view perspective on why this case is so important? What is about this case
so powerful as it pertains to the climate of censorship, as it pertains to
the direction of the federal government and especially the executive branch and their approach to
dissident viewpoints and dissident journalism. How important do you see as somebody who's covered
this, who's researched, who's worked in this space for years, how important
is this case? This case is hugely important from a First Amendment perspective and
also from a totalitarian government perspective. Every journalist should be appalled at what the
State Department did. And the State Department was actually housing the GEC as a
multi agency organization, So the GEC was helping do all of this with all
of these other ABC type organizations, so they were working GEC was working with
the FBI, and was working with the DoD They're not part of this lawsuit,
but the State Department is kind of the center to everything that was happening.
And I think that this case is also really important because Americans need to
wake up to what is actually going on. And it is not merely trying
to combat foreign propaganda, but it's trying to control not just what Americans want
read and say, but what they think. And this you can discover if
you just look at the types of grants being funded for research. It is
including grants to psychiatrists or psychologists on basically info warfare. And what they're trying
to do with these technologies is to figure out what people are talking about and
then how to counter that message. Maybe if the message was it is good
to do a terrorist attack, yeah, that's something we want to counter,
but that's not what they're countering. They're countering anything that is contrary to who
the leaders are in see and we're not just talking about the Biden administration.
This happened under the Trump administration and it started under the Obama administration. It
is, to use the phrase deep state, it is those who think they
know the decisions that should be made and not the American public. And when
the Internet became so prolific for allowing people to talk and to educate and to
learn and to read it terrified those who used to have control, and that's
why this is so important to make sure that they never have that control again,
and that the Americans and the American press have the ability to speak and
to debate and to educate the country. You know. Yeah, this case
really forces the forces the court to confront one of the biggest problems in our
country anymore, which is that people don't have obvious they don't share obvious consensus
definitions of things like terrorism. We see the FBI weaponizing terms like that,
what is disinformation? What is a fact? These are serious problems in our
society. I think the more people like you Martin forced this issue in courts,
you know, where there's such obvious problems, glaring problems with the way
the government is choosing to weaponize and interpret some of these terms against its against
its critics, against the press. It's just a scary time. So Margot,
thank you so much for all your work on this. Well, thank
you so much for having me and for taking their time to let me walk
through all of the details. And I look forward with the new Civil Liberties
Alliance to really putting an end to these abridgments of the Federalists and the Daily
Wires Free speech rights. Oh absolutely, we're going to be following the case
obviously very closely. And CLA as we mentioned earlier, NCLA legal dot org.
That's the website for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. They have represented the
Federalists before and done excellent work, and we're looking forward to to following this
Clay this case very closely. Here because I'll just say I concur and have
been fascinated to hear your perspective on how important this case is. Marco.
So thank you so much for your time. You're very very busy. We're
just very grateful you stop by Federalist Radio Hour. Thanks so much. Emily,
of course you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Elisashinski, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with
more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray right.