Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is John Veckioni, Senior Litigation Council for
the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which just won a huge
First Amendment victory over government speech police. John, welcome back,
Thank you so much for joining us in the Federalist
Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Great to be here.
Speaker 1: You've got great news. As we talk Judge right before
we went on the podcast gives you what you were
ultimately looking for. You'd had one step left, and the
judge signed on to this amazing agreement that really does
aim to stop what we saw for too many years
during quite frankly, the Biden administration, happened under any administration,
but we just saw a complete strong arming of social
media by the government to silence the speech of all
kinds of folks, particularly conservatives.
Speaker 2: It's true now I will say this that the activities
started under COVID under the first Trump administration, but it
wasn't that they were run out of the White House.
Then it doesn't appear, but the allegations start in the
Trump administration. Then they batchet up exponentially in the Biden
administration with what they called a whole of government approach
to stamping down views they didn't like. And I'll mention
the case. The case name right now is Missouri v. Biden.
I think that's what we've called it. But Biden for
the POLYMERI injunction was dropped out of the case because
you can't join the president, so it was Murphy v. Missouri.
Folks might have heard of it when it was at
the Supreme Court. So I just want to say where
we are. And after after a lot of jockeying, a
lot of legal maneuvers, we've entered a consent decree which
makes a lot of great statements about free speech and
then allows our clients, who are Aaron Kerriatti and Jill Hines,
Jay Bodicharia and Martin Kuldorf who are now in the administration,
started this case but they dropped when they joined the
administration to enforce this consent decree if their social media
posts are ever taken down or shadow band or whatever
by government activity by the Surgeon General, the CDC or SISA,
so that is, and also Louisiana and Missouri and Gateway
Pundit Jim Hoff can also enforce this agreement.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and as I point out, and a piece of
the Federalist up this week, this deal will I think
ultimately help some other cases. I know that your organization
has helped in getting the Federalist and some other news
organizations dealing with this problem as well.
Speaker 2: I guess, so I guess what we should say full disclosure.
The Federalist is a client of NCLA is having its
own speech downgraded and removed from various social media. So
that's another case that's going on. And I really hope
for follow on bolls from this. In your case, I
can't say more, but that's what I hope.
Speaker 1: Indeed, Well, we'll talk a little bit more about that,
because it's expanded silencing of speech, speech suppression. But I
guess I wanted to ask you before we delve too
much into this. There's good news don't get me wrong,
and don't I don't want to put to cast a
shadow of doubt over this agreement. But here's the thing.
It's kind of like the monitoring of the nuclear weapon
program in Iran. It feels like that, how will we
know in the future if these agencies are actually complying
Because you know, John, it took the Twitter files. It
took Elon Musk in many ways to purchase Twitter and
turn it into x to be able to get this
information out to the public.
Speaker 2: It's true. So before that we brought the cases before
that from just things the administration was saying, but then
all that cascaded down and then the congressional inquiries found
even more material, right, and that was and my colleague
Jenny and Unis left NCLA for a while. She's no
longer with us in any event, she's gone on to
another group, but she left and she helped with the
congressional investigation for many months. So there was it took.
I mean, you had to boil the oceans to get
this information because in this case, both the government was
resisting and the social media organizations which we didn't sue,
were resisting discovery. So you're absolutely right about that. And
I think what we're going to do in this case
is under the agreement we give our everybody gives their
social media accounts that they have to we reveal it,
and those are the social media accounts that are going
to monitor this. But if we're downgraded or moved otherwise,
we'll test. Hey, look, we think we're downgraded because these
messages that are coming out of the government, and before
we move, they have to say, you know, what they're
doing is the way I would put it. You know,
I suppose they'll just say the social media is downgrading us,
but we can check with our own social media companies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well you said this about this case. You said,
this case began with a suspicion that blossomed into fact
that led to congressional hearings and an executive order that
government censorship of American social media posts should end. You
noted as well that this took some doing to get there.
When did the case really officially begin? Obviously it started
in Missouri, But what was the catalyst once again for
this case.
Speaker 2: So we first I will say this, so Janine Unis
was a lawyer here, and she was on Twitter all
the time and she noticed that all of her anti
lockdown posts were a bit disappearing, and she was in
a community that had that and saw that was happening.
One guy was Jay Boticharia now the head of over
at HHS, and Martin Kohldorf and Aaron Kerriotti, and they
were all they were like, why is this all happening
at the same time. But before that happened, we had
Mark Changhezi and some other folks. Janina and I brought
a case in Ohio where we allege this that this
was the government, not social media, and the judge says, well,
you don't. You don't really know that, and they have
their own curating policies, so I'm going to dismiss this
for lack of standing. So that case got knocked out.
But then this fellow named John Sower read our complaint
and he was at the Missouri AG's office and he
called us up, and I forget if he followed put
on a lot of our stuff in his complaint or
I forget the exact time, and I'm going to have
to check on that. But he called us up and said,
do you have any other clients other than these? And
we did the folks I just met mentioned plus Jill Lines.
So we joined Missouri and Louisiana's case about four years
ago and maybe five. And the fact is we said, look,
this is not happening the way I sometimes put it is,
you know, Hooper and Jaws says, this was no voting accident. Well,
this was no social media accident. There was a Leviathan
doing this, and that was our allegations. And the reason
it was so hard as that first case I just
said that was dismissed is a lot of courts were
just saying, well, how do you know, Well, when you
file a complaint, you make an allegation, then you get discovery.
And in this case, Judge Dowdy said, well, look for
preliminary injunction. I'm going to give them discovery. It was
limited discovery, but he gave us eight depositions, including doctor Fauci,
and he gave us we could we could send subpenis
to social media and we could ask the government and interrogatories.
And one of the things that happened in this case
that I think really showed that the government was hiding
the ball when we asked the government who had contacted
the social media outfits Twitter, Facebook, by all of them. Instagram,
they gave us a list of like, let's say, twenty
five names. But when we subpoenaed the social media companies,
they gave us a list of one hundred and twenty
five names from the government that had contacted them. So
it was obvious that what was happening here was they
were getting a lot more government pushback and interference then
the government was even admitting to and that blew open
emails of the government had told them what they didn't like.
What didn't they like, well, a lot of true things.
They didn't like that the COVID vaccines did not stop transmission.
They didn't like that the COVID vaccines were most efficacious
in people over fifty five sixty and they were not
at as effication says you got younger down the line,
particularly teenagers. They did not like that mass don't work.
They did not like that once a viral respiratory disease
was out there, you couldn't stop it by this social
distancing thing. And they didn't like the fact that talk
about the Constitution and your rights when they were shutting
you all down. So and then for Hoft and the States,
they also note they had a lot of speech on
the election of twenty twenty having having you know, voting irregularities,
and then also Hunter Biden's laptop they had that was
that was they said it was Russian disinformation. So you
got to take off that. This was all Hunter Biden.
Now almost all that stuff. I'll put the voting stuff
aside for a second, but all the other things are
Everyone ninety believes all those statements are true. And all
those statements were removed from the public discourse by the
government when it could true things.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's outrageous, true things John identified by
the government as disinformation, misinformation and this doozy of a
big brother concept mail information, and of course mail information
was described by the people who used it as stuff
that's true but makes the government uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah they didn't hide that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just amazing to me. But you know, I
really do think or Well got it right. He was
just a few years too soon on it all. But
this really did feel orwellian to those of us who
got our speech locked out as we were locked down
by the government.
Speaker 2: And now not only that, I will say this, every
lawyer who got involved in this are the type of
lawyers who don't trust the government, right, we'd see the
government all the time. I think, I am not I'm
not telling any secrets when I tell you that every
lawyer who worked on this, from NCLA to Jim Hosh,
lawyer Jonathan Burns, to the Missouri and Louisiana AGS and sg's,
we were shocked by how massive this was. That the
fact that the government had portals, electronic portals to the
social media to tell them the messages they wanted downgraded
and they didn't like that were special functions that the
government could send them was was that flawergast at us.
So as we got into it, it got worse and worse.
But I do I don't want to let this go
by without reading the two paragraphs that take care of
the very problem you just mentioned that I think are
going to be repeated in free speech stuff if this
ever happens again. Paragraph twenty one. The parties that means
both sides, That means the agencies and the government and
US agree that government, politicians, media academics, or anyone else
supplying labels such as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation to speech
does not render it constitutionally unprotected. So can that is
part of this agreement, so that we're not going to
I don't think credibly be able to hear from any
future administration that anything different. And then paragraph twenty two,
for these reasons, the government cannot take actions formal or informal,
directly or indirectly, except as authorized by law, to threaten
social media companies with some form of punishment. And then
it lists all the type of sanctions they can threaten
unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering
their algorithms, posted social media content containing protected free speech.
I think those two paragraphs are just home runs. You know,
there's some things in here we can discuss that are
not I say, it could have been a Grand Slam
if we'd wanted Supreme Court. But it's a home run overall.
That's the way I put it.
Speaker 1: Because it's a home it's a home run. John, I
think because you have a judge signing on to this,
no question. You had an executive order, and it was
a good executive order by President Donald Trump. But as
you know, executive orders are very much subject to change,
particularly in modern day politics. What we saw when Biden
got into office, he undid everything that Trump put into
executive order, and then he did the same to Biden
when he got into office, so that could have just disappeared.
This now has to use the phrase that you guys
struggled with. This has a lot more standing now, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It does, and it has teeth in a little bit
of teeth. I mean, if we do suspect, like I said,
we have to go to the government and say, look,
we think you're doing this, and they have to give
a big given opportunity to cure or show that they're
not doing that. But I do think that the fact
that just that this exists, that the government has agreed
to this, no one else can sue under See early
on in litigation Judge Dowdy when he issued his plumer
injunction stopping the government from doing this at the beginning.
You know, after our discovery that I described, he also
found that there was no class action, so he had
knocked out the class action. Unless we wanted to revisit that,
we weren't going to be able to do this for
the whole country, because that's what class actions are about.
Speaker 1: Right right. Well, this was no easy feat. Again, you
talk about the years that were involved. When you started
this whole process. When you began this lawsuit, you were
laughed at, you were shamed, You were accused of not
following the science. You were accused of threatening the lives
of Americans through the spread of COVID because you would
fight for people who said horribly ridiculous things like standing
six foot away from someone wouldn't stop the spread of
a virus. I mean, it all sounds silly right now,
but it was serious business. What was it like in
the early days of this lawsuit for you and for
your clients.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I I have always said I'm a
lay person, I'm not a scientist, and I always said
that I didn't blame the government for sort of panicking
and doing something for sixty to ninety days. But a
lot of my clients said, who were scientists, said no,
we all knew from the beginning. We all knew this
stuff from the beginning. I know, BECCHIONI, you're being too
lenient with these people. But you know, you know how
the government they're not they're not scientists.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not the brightest bulbs, right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I'm some sort of squish, but I'm usually
willing to give them sixty to ninety days before. I say,
it's off off, off base. But here it had been
a long time. We were trying to stop it in retrospect,
but people were so committed, so committed to their positions
that they wouldn't give an inch. And then they started
covering it, you know, not wanting to hand over anything
in discovery. And that always tells you what you know,
the name of the game is, or I say, usually
tells you sometimes it's attorney client privilege. But that wasn't
that wasn't what they were a legend here. So yes,
it was terrible, and it was terrible for my clients.
It was absolutely terrible to be called all these names,
particularly I mean Jay and Martin. They were some of
the most respected men in their field. And Faucia his
people decided that they were going to make their names
mud And so you know, what do I care, White,
I'm a lawyer. People call your names of all time. Who cares?
But I do think that I do think that for
regular Americans it was maybe the first time in their
lives that for taking a normal, true position, they had
been kind of hurled into outer darkness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just one of the darkest times in American history,
certainly for free speech, certainly for government abuses against the
First Amendment and the oath that they swear in taking
their positions in office. Frightening time for a lot of people.
Our guest today is John Vecchioni, Senior Litigation Council for
the New Civil Liberties Alliance, just fresh off of a
huge win, huge First Amendment victory over government speech police.
Let me ask you this, What was it like deposing
Anthony Fauci.
Speaker 2: All right, so I tell the story a little bit.
So it was over at AHHS. And as we're going
through the screeners at HHS, it's in Maryland, just just
across the border in DC, big big thing. And as
we're going in, uh the to give you some idea
of how, you know, powerful he was at that time,
and you know there was all he was on the
cover of the magazines, he was in every TV show,
all the you know, they were all having them on. Oh,
doctor Fauci tells this that and the other thing. As
we go into AHHS, the lady at the desk, as
we're going I said, oh, we're going to see doctor Fauci.
She says he's such a wonderful man. And uh, and
I had to restrain my colleague, who doesn't think he's
such a wonderful man. But that was I mean, it
was just like a hushed is Fauci. So we went
up there and now Governor Landry, he was the head
of the a G was there and he had with
him h. R. F. K. Junior's book the Real Doctor
Fauci that he had up standing in front of him
during the whole deposition that John Sower took, which which
it did seem to bother Fauci, but I did think
it was it was quite respectable. Also, the ag in
Missouri was there. It was you know, all the all
the attorneys were there, and John Soyer had all the
documents and he went through with Fauci. And we've later
found that we don't think he was very truthful in
his memory certainly was not as good. He has a
great memory. And I will say this for doctor Fauci.
He was in his nineties when we deposed him, and
he went the whole eight hours, uh, not flagging, not tiring,
not anything. So the guy is in tremendous health, whatever
else I may say about him. But but I do
say this he was in defense mode, and he the
real thing here was there was email exchanges between him
and subordinate about stopping Jay Bardicharia and Martin couldorf from
the Brownstone statement, which was the normal statement of how
you deal with pandemics that are respiratory and and and
they really wanted to shut him, shut him down and
push back on that. And it is not they And
he says I never sent any email to social media.
He says he didn't use them. I suspect now that
he has private emails that he has is his secretary
used But he didn't say that. But I will say this,
it was a very dramatic time, and the whole question
of whether the virus was created in a Chinese lab
with funds from AHHHS, he was very very nervous about.
I will say that that was nervous. I do think.
I do think that there are two things going on there.
I just want to be fair about this. I think
funds went to HHS, but the timing to create this
virus may not be there. So I think he was
trying to avoid saying that, yeah, we give all this
stuff to the to their virus experiments, but we didn't
do this one, and but that's a harder cell than
oh no, we didn't do any of that. So it
was more like we didn't do any of that. And
then and you know, the IRIS couldn't have been formed
in a lab type stuff. Yeah, I don't think I
don't think it's true, and I don't think he believes that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean again, that was the cover for so long,
and then even the Biden administration government agencies had to say,
you know, no, not so much, doctor Fauci.
Speaker 2: And and don't forget. So we're pressing him, we're pressing
them for their documents. But social media is also not
on our side. They are resisting, resisting, resisting, so that
everything was a fight, and since we ensued them, the
third parties have more protection against handing over information. So
it was very hard and time consuming to try to
get things out of social media companies to contradict what
the government was saying, and they didn't want to. Now,
after the administration change, suddenly Zuckerberg and everyone's saying, oh, yeah,
we were terribly pressured. We shouldn't have done that, right,
But I do want to tell you one thing about
social media that I think you'll be shocked by. I
was shocked by because I have certain prejudices about social media.
I thought that the Biden administration and social media would
be cheek by jal and handing glove on this stuff,
and it would be pushing on an open door to
censor Americans for stuff the Democratic administration didn't want. That
was not true. At the very beginning of this, the
social media companies, first with Trump and then with Biden,
we're saying, hey, do we really need to do that?
Maybe we shouldn't be doing this. There are emails, including
from Nick Klagg a Facebook. Now he's a British politician
who was very big in UK politics and he went
to work for Facebook, and he's getting these calls from
the White House saying shut this down, shut that down,
and and he writes an email and he says, we
think there are First Amendment problems with telling Americans not
to say this that or the other thing, or downgrading
their social media. And the White House is emailing back,
you know, nonetheless shut it down. So it wasn't the
case that the social media, which I would think would
just go yeah, that was not the case. Then there
was so much pressure put on them that I think
it's like July twenty twenty two, something like that. They
all broke down and did what the White House wanted.
Speaker 1: After that, were you guys being suppressed trying to get
the word out there on social media while you were
going through the depth of.
Speaker 2: Oh this is good, this is good. You remind me
of so many stories. So we had John Souer over
to our offices at the New Civil Liberties Alliance and
we had some of our clients and we had a
discussion of what we had found in the litigation and
what we were trying to do in front I think
it was in front of the Fifth Circuit Dowdy had
ruled on his Pilmer injunction. We're going up and so
we're talking about, like I just said, about the Chinese
lab theory and things like that. That's what we were
discussing because they were part of the case. We weren't
pushing one or the other. We're just describing what was ungraded.
YouTube took ncla's YouTube video discussing the case off of
YouTube and gave us a warning saying we were doing
misinformation and we could not we could not have that
YouTube video discussing the case that was going to the
Supreme Court. So think about that. A matter of public
concern about a case that's filed in federal court that
is being followed by so many news organizations around the
country and YouTube panics and takes us off. We had
I think we had to spend something like two or
three days pointing out all this nonsense and getting it
put back on. But I think it was still downgraded
by the algorithm. Can you imagine.
Speaker 3: Twelve point seven percent of US credit card balances are
how Ley watched Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.
Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
the economy and how it affects your wallet. So American's
credit card balances are experiencing late fees to the highest
level since twenty eleven. More and more people are falling
behind as people are over ninety days late. Not a
good sign. Whether it's happening in DC or down on
Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: That is an absolute assault on the First Amendment. And
I am particularly disgusted by the fact that the answer
from the White House, the answer from I shouldn't say
the White House at that time, but the answer from
these agencies and these scientists was, we don't care if
it's a violation of the First Amendment. Were they You
mentioned the idea of panic, and I guess I get
that you're dealing with a pandemic. You're dealing with something
that you hadn't really experienced to this extent for what
one hundred years, trying times in the first thirty sixty days.
All of that said, did they use the cover of
COVID for so much, even long after they knew that?
What did the emails? What did the documents say about that?
Speaker 2: Well, what they say is this idea of the malinformation
and misinformation. I'll give you an example. There was there
was a meme or a rumor or something that the
vaccines put microchips in your bloodstream and changed your brain
to do what the ruling faction wanted you to do. Now, Matt,
I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait a minute, hold on, John, I'm getting a
message from the microchip.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true. But you know what, that's
free speech. You're allowed to say that.
Speaker 1: You bet. Listen, there's so many idiotic things in social media.
If we had to block every stupid, weird conspiracy out there,
nobody would get anything done.
Speaker 2: But once they had gotten on to this malinformation misinformation,
and I think also the Russia laptop thing really played
into this, really played into this. The bureaucrats and the
people involved really did believe that if something was malinformation, misinformation, disinformation,
they were allowed to suppress it, right. They didn't think
that was a free speech problem at all.
Speaker 1: Where do they get this idea though?
Speaker 2: I look, I think part of it was from foreign policy.
I think it was the national security crowd does have
Russian disinformation which they try to keep out of the country,
all right out from outside the country. But once it's
inside the country, they shouldn't have anything to say about it,
to tell you the truth. I mean, that's just the
matter of once it's inside the country being said by Americans,
that's the end of the day. Now. That is those
are terms that have come from the national security, primarily
from the Cold War, from agit prop and fighting the
communist behemoth. They would say, look, this is disinformation, this
is a false well, all that stuff, false flag, all
the stuff you hear on the internet now all comes
from national security stuff, and it leaked into domestic discussion
and discussion and belief by the agencies, I believe, And
they didn't say this, but just following it, and I've
been in an old core or myself, I think I
do know how this idea traveled. And I think they
just domesticated something that was supposed to be used against
foreigners and not Americans.
Speaker 1: Now you said this before, and you're absolutely right. I
do find it hard to believe that the social media
giants out there, big tech giants, didn't at some level say, oh, yeah,
this is in the best interest of our interest and
this and that. No, I certainly understand that. I guess
I'm just what I'm saying is I am surprised that
there was any resistance from what I've read of the
Twitter files, for instance.
Speaker 2: That's true, but that most a lot of the Twitter
stuff came after what I call the collapse, the collapse
of a resistance, and there was a period where they
all just collapsed. They'd had it. But the initial pushback
I think was for two things. There was still a
hangover of the information should be free Internet. Some of
your listeners may remember before twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen, the
whole Internet was supposed to make all information free and
everybody's gonna, you know, have open access to everything, and
that was kind of the promise of it. I think
there was still some of that. And I think the
other thing is which a Supreme Court did not understand,
which is all these organizations make their money on eyeballs.
When they take eyebs away from their product, they are
throwing dollars out the window. They have a financial interest
in people thinking that they're going to see what's what's
actually on there, and that they're going to be able
to speak freely. That is actually a selling point. So
they're not going to go do this. This is why
I always bring up Jill Hines. She had outward facing posts,
but she also had an internal discussion, and that internal
discussion could not, under any circumstances, could not, under any circumstances,
be seen by anyone else. So no one had an
interest in quashing it except the government. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know it's interesting. They certainly, at least from
from what I've seen being in the media business for longer,
than I'd like to acknowledge. You know, the government had,
particularly in the Biden era, they had all the assistance
they could possibly ever want, and more from the corporate media,
what I like to call the accountless media. They were
more than that. And I remember the different you know,
news outlets and the morning talk shows, the view and
all of those sorts of things. And we heard over
and over again, for instance, about COVID, how you know,
terrible it was that you had people going on social media.
They were defending these policies even when they knew that
these companies, driven by the federal government were just dismantling
First Amendment and free speech. What I'm really interested to know,
and this is the question I've asked so many times
in so many different areas over the last several years.
Do you believe that doctor Fauci and Collins and the
rest of the hundred plus names that you got out
of this investigation, will they ever be held accountable?
Speaker 2: Not? They won't be held accountable by either civil or
or criminal judgments. I think they'll be accountable in history.
I think some of them already have. I mean, you
look at the adulation that Fauci had at the time,
and that has dropped off. I think that they're not
really held as high regard but in public esteem. But
I think that I think one thing this consent decree
does is it is a public rejection of all the
premises of the censorship that were promulgated by those individuals,
and so I think that's very important. It all that
everything that they underlawed. Because I'll tell you this, I
don't know about Fauci, but it's definitely true of the
woman who's the siss of people and the woman who
is going to be put I'm forgetting her name right now,
the Mary people and singer. She loved being in charge
of all the Americans and what they could do and
what they could not do. There was for a lot
of these people the idea that they could control other
people's lives through this was I think a frison of
power that just thrilled them. And so they don't have
that anymore, and I don't think they'll have it again,
and I certainly hope they won't. So I do think
that the fact that Elon brought bought Twitter, and that
I think Zuckerberg feels chastised. Now He's not He's not
going to jump onto any bandwagons anytime soon. It strikes
me that the government does. He's going to go and say, look,
this is what's happening and see where people land or fight.
So I do think that there have been lessons learned.
The question is how long do those lessons last, because
you know, everyone forgets everything after ten years, and it's
probably shorter now than ten years. But I do think
that for right now, there's enough people with memories of
this that they won't so quickly jump on it. And
as I said, this consent order signed by a federal
judge says here's things the government should not be doing
in regards to speech, and that is going to have
a powerful We get to enforce it for ten years, right,
and then it'll expire. If they've broken a bunch of times.
I guess we'll try to have it renewed. But the
fact is that by its terms it ends in ten years.
But that's a couple of administrations right there. So I
think that at least we'll waive it around in whatever
circumstances we can. But I also think that other First
Amendment advocates should be citing it, say, look, they agreed
to this what has changed, what has changed, and nothing
will have changed as to the principles of the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they should keep fighting for it and keep
fighting for it. I think it should be in perpetuity.
You know, that's not what it is right now. But
I'm hoping that you have people well in advance in
this country who are fighting for the continuation of this thing.
It should just be clear. You shouldn't have to have
a court order, consent decree, a negotiated Greek agreement that
says the government will not break the First Amendment to
the Constitution. And I know the government certainly has on many,
many different occasions, but this was such a just a
massive abuse of power. It's amazing. One guy who is
definitely celebrating this victory today is Senator Eric Schmidt, as
you know, Oh yeah, he was Missouri's attorney general at
the time, and he originally sued the Biden administration for
what he called brazenly colluding with big tech to silence
miss Urians. This is what he had to say in
a statement yesterday. This is a massive win for the
First Amendment and for every American who believes in free speech.
He said that the government particularly Biden's tenure in government.
His administration brought the most aggressively liberal in anti liberty
excesses of government that America has ever seen. Now, you've
been involved in a lot of cases that showcase the
excesses of government anti liberty issues. Would you agree with
Senator Schmid on that in the.
Speaker 2: Post Civil war area? I would agree. So I have
a longer historical memory. I don't know if the Aliens
edition acts. I'm as far as percentage of the population
and number of people it has to be the biggest,
it has to be. I just hesitate on some of
the historical things. But okay, one hundred and fifty years,
the Senator and I agree, this has really been huge,
and the number of people it affected is just I
don't think there's anything that compares with it.
Speaker 1: What I'm curious about is something you talked about before
when you originally started on this legal path. You took
it to Ohio. That court there said sorry, you don't
have standing, which I found amazing at that point, and
then you get it to the Supreme Court after you
have this injunction from a lower court. The Biden administration
challenges that it goes to the Supreme Court and the
majority ruling, which was written by Justice Amy Cony. Barrett
again said, yeah, this could be a problem, but A,
you don't have standing. B how do you know what
the social media operators were thinking when that verdict, when
that ruling came in. What was your thought, because clearly
it wasn't to give up at that point.
Speaker 2: You kept fighting, right And I will so I had
two thoughts. The first thought was do they know how
these social media companies make their money? That was the
first thing. But also I felt that we would have
to go back and find the standing, and particularly we
would have to get more detailed discovery. And I will
say this the press and everyone said, and I also
pointed out immediately the dissent said there was standing and
also then also said that this was a huge First
Amendment violation. So every judge in the Fifth Circuit, Judge Dowdy,
District Court, every judge to reach the question I'm the
Supreme Court said that this was a violation of the
First Amendment. And I'll just tell you something that happened
or all argument. Ben Aguinagua, ben Aguenaga is the This
was the new Solicitor General when Liz Morel got bumped
up to a G, and Landry got bumped up to governor.
He became s G. And he argued this case in
the Supreme Court and UH. While while this argument was
going on in front of them, Kavanaugh and Kagan were
both going back and forth with how many times they
called newspapers when they were in the administration, one for
the second Bush and one for Clinton and UH or Obama. Well, Clinton, Clinton,
I think so any event, So so all of a sudden,
Roberts jumped in. He says, I want to be very clear,
when I was in government, I never censored anybody. I
put it on the record. I do think that the
standing is important. And the thing is with Barrett is
she does this to everyone. I you know that meme
that they have where she's holding up the pad showing
she has no notes during her and and so people
will write things, write things in there to be what
what I what I always put with it is no injunctions.
So this is not ideological with her. She seems to
be very rigorous on every point. And I would say,
in this standing thing, I think she really got it
wrong obviously, But I don't think it's I don't think
it's like everyone's priors in that case are discernible from
other things they've done. So I don't want anyone to
think that the people in the majority in Murphy v.
Missouri were, you know, making it up to defend the government.
I don't think that, but I think that it was
very naive the underlying assumptions of how things work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you've been very generous through the time. I
appreciate it. I just wanted to for closing thoughts, what
is next in the battle for liberty? Including something we
mentioned before, This battle for speech for the First Amendment
is far from over again.
Speaker 2: Counsel, I'll tell you this. The reason this was so
insidious was because it was a bank shot. Private parties
can not say or say whatever they want, right, So
you can't sue private parties for saying or not saying
things for very good reason. That's part of freeom of speech.
But the government is not allowed to censor it. But
what happens when a huge administrative state that reaches its
fingers into every part of American life starts pressuring people
to say or not say things, and this standing issue
is going to come up again. It'll come up in
the Federalist case. Although I will say this the newspapers,
I think in your newspaper. I know, I know you're
not the mainstream media, but your newspaper as far as
the as far as the first amendments concerned, I think
you guys will have a better chance of getting standing
in the future. That's that's kind of how I look
at this. I think that the press has always been
given a little more latitude on standing issues and a
lot of issues. So maybe that's the approach we take
next time. But I also think that we have to
figure out a way to do it faster, because in
this case, the EO came out right said we're not
going to do this anymore. We have arguments against that
because you know, as you pointed out, eos come and go.
They're not a permanent solution, and the person who stopped
doing it for this period could start doing it again,
and you want an order that stops it, you know, permanently,
like our order. So I do think that we have
to address this problem of the courts taking so long
that circumstances change and then the government either is going
to argue mootness or it's going to argue mootness from
what it does. Or look who in this country is
right now defending the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation?
Right that the issue has kind of gone away, So
you want to avoid that. So you want to get
these things into court faster, and you want to somehow
move the ball quicker so that it doesn't take this long.
Speaker 1: I know the one guy I just thought of him,
Adam Adam Schiff. I think he's the last, the last
holdout on that front. Well, you know, this really did this,
the battles that you engaged in, this whole fight over
this critical First Amendment issue really did expose the administrative state.
If anything. That's that's one of the big takeaways is
that we have in this government too much government, too
much bureaucracy, and it controls things in a way that
is detrimental, deletarious to the US Constitution and civil liberties.
Thanks to my guest today, John Becchioni, you bet, senior
Litigation Council for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which just
won a huge First Amendment victory over government speech police.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittles, Senior Elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.
Speaker 2: I heard the fame, voice the reason, and then it
faded away.