DOJ Settles Lawsuit Alleging Biden Admin Pressured Twitter to Suppress Speech

The U.S. Department of Justice settled litigation on May 13 alleging that the Biden administration pressured Twitter to suppress speech by Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who criticized COVID-19 vaccine claims.

The Justice Department said the lawsuit alleged that the federal government violated the First Amendment by pressuring the social media company into suppressing “disfavored speech.”

The settlement was announced as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The order states the Biden administration “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms” through pressure on social media companies to moderate or suppress content.

“The Biden Administration engaged in blatant viewpoint discrimination, wielding power over social media to kick conservatives off Twitter completely,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement released by the Justice Department.

Berenson claimed in the lawsuit that his First Amendment rights were suppressed when a senior board member of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company and the Biden administration worked together to pressure Twitter, now X, to suspend Berenson’s account. Berenson said he was a leading COVID-19 vaccine skeptic.

The lawsuit stated that Berenson’s Twitter account received more than 1 billion impressions in 2021 and was growing in popularity.

“The key settlement line: Biden’s White House ‘did in fact violate the First Amendment by exerting substantial coercive pressure on social media companies such as Twitter to suppress disfavored speech like Plaintiff’s,’” Berenson posted on X. “Not ‘jawboning.’ They coerced Twitter to ban me. Vindicated!”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division called the settlement “an important milestone in the battle for free speech in [the United States], concerning a time when social media censorship encouraged by state and federal government actors suppressed wide swaths of protected speech.”

“The proper antidote to speech one doesn’t like, is more speech,” Dhillon said in a press release.

Rebecca Tinio, a Justice Department attorney who represented the Biden administration officials in the litigation, didn’t return an email seeking comment.

After Elon Musk bought Twitter, he released documents referred to as the Twitter Files, which were reviewed by journalists.

Those files fueled speculation that the White House targeted Berenson, who had contested claims about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, testified that the White House wanted Berenson banned.

“Twitter did confirm that millions of dollars were paid to Twitter by the FBI,” Turley said. “Some have suggested that this constituted direct payment for censorship. These files show not just a massive censorship system but a coordination and integration of the government to a degree that few imagined before the release of the Twitter Files.”