Judge Orders Fauci, Other Top Officials to Testify Under Oath by Dr. Joseph Mercola
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- In the summer of 2022, a lawsuit was filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana against the federal government, including Dr. Anthony Fauci
- The lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government colluded with Big Tech giants Twitter, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn to censor certain viewpoints by labeling them “misinformation” or “disinformation”
- In September 2022, a federal judge ordered Fauci and other officials to turn over emails with five social media firms
- Now, a federal court has taken it a step further, ruling that Fauci and other officials must testify under oath at depositions about whether they colluded with Big Tech to censor certain users
- The suit gives multiple examples of Fauci’s roles in the suppression of free speech, including that related to the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, COVID-19 shots and the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns
Restriction of free speech excelled during the COVID-19 pandemic, when efforts to shut down public discussions and information that countered the official narrative were in full force. In the summer of 2022, a lawsuit was filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana against the federal government, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).1
The lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government colluded with Big Tech giants Twitter, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn to censor certain viewpoints by labeling them “misinformation” or “disinformation.” In September 2022, a federal judge ordered Fauci and other officials to turn over emails with five social media firms.2
Fauci initially refused, stating that the communications were protected by executive privilege. However, the judge ordered that the documents be turned over within 21 days nonetheless. Fauci was also ordered to answer questions posed by the plaintiffs in full. Mary Holland, president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense, explained:3
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“Up until now, Dr. Fauci has operated under this cloak of ‘untouchableness,’ thinking he has been above the law. He likely didn’t expect his emails to be made public. We can only imagine what this tranche of emails will likely reveal about Dr. Fauci’s bare-knuckled censorship — it won’t be pretty.”
Now, a federal court has taken it a step further, ruling that Fauci and other officials must testify under oath at depositions about whether they colluded with Big Tech to censor certain users.4
US Government Accused of Suppressing Free Speech
The original lawsuit was filed in May 2022 by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.5 A joint statement regarding witness depositions reads:6
“Plaintiffs allege Defendants have colluded with and/or coerced social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling the content “dis-information,” “mis-information,” and “mal-information.”
Plaintiffs allege the suppression of disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and contents constitutes government action and violates Plaintiffs’ freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
What Was the Government Trying to Hide?
Several examples are given of suppression of free speech. Among them:7
• The Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 presidential election — Evidence found on Hunter’s laptop suggests he helped secure “millions in funding” for Metabiota, a U.S. contractor in Ukraine “specializing in deadly pathogen research,” which is what the Russian government had claimed during a press conference March 24, 2022.8
In addition, one of Metabiota’s investors is Rosemont Seneca,9 an investment fund co-managed by Hunter Biden.10
Metabiota is also a core partner in the USAID PREDICT program, which funded laboratory equipment for the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China through grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, and Shi Zhengli, a top coronavirus researcher at the WIV, also worked with PREDICT.11The media, however, largely dismissed the story.12
Daniel Schmidt, a freshman at the University of Chicago and writer for the university’s student-run newspaper The Chicago Thinker, even confronted Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, about the media dismissal, stating:13
“In 2020 you wrote, ‘Those who live outside the Fox News bubble do not, of course, need to learn any of the stuff about Hunter Biden,’ referring to his laptop, of course. A poll later found that if voters knew about the contents of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters would have acted differently.
Now, of course, we know … that The New York Times confirmed that the content is real. Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation and what can be learned from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation and not reality?”
• Speech about the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origin — The plaintiffs allege that Fauci censored “speech backed by great scientific credibility and with enormous potential nationwide impact.”14 This includes information that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
One of the major pieces of propaganda is “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,”15 a paper published in Nature Medicine in March 2020 that became the preeminent “proof” that SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin and couldn’t possibly have come from a lab. It was later revealed that Fauci, Wellcome Trust head Jeremy Farrar and Dr. Francis Collins, NIH director, had a hand in the paper.16 As Children’s Health Defense reported:17
“If the lab leak theory were true, in turn, it would mean that Fauci could be potentially implicated in funding the research on viruses that caused the COVID-19 pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide, the plaintiffs argued. This is because he funded risky “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through intermediaries such as EcoHealth Alliance.
In late January 2020 and early February 2020, Fauci was also in touch with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in oral communications about the government’s COVID-19 response. Facebook then allegedly went on [to] censor the lab leak theory, according to the plaintiffs.”
• Speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns — Two plaintiffs in the case, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which scientifically critiqued the effects of prolonged lockdowns in response to COVID-19.
Collins sent an email to Fauci stating, “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take-down of its premises.” In response, Fauci began to publicly criticize the Declaration, calling it “total nonsense” and “ridiculous.”18
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), which is part of the lawsuit, representing Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, stated:19
