State Department targeting Dr Gold, AFLDS cited by judge who blocked Biden censorship

A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction stopping the Biden administration from its practice of calling in social media company representatives to coerce them into censoring content the administration wants silenced.

AFLDS

Judge Terry Doughty, appointed to the bench by President Trump, listed, in his ruling, numerous examples of the government's targeting of speech protected by the First Amendment, including that of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), which was founded by Dr. Simone Gold.

When America’s Frontline Doctors held a press conference criticizing the Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and spouting the benefits of hydroxychloroquine in treating the coronavirus, Dr. Fauci made statements on Good Morning America and on Andrea Mitchell Reports that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in treating the coronavirus. 

Social-media platforms censored the America’s Frontline Doctors videos. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube removed the video. Dr. Fauci does not deny that he or his staff at NIAID may have communicated with social-media platforms, but he does not specifically recall it. [Emphases added].

Targeted by State

Public health officials were not the only government agents violating Dr. Gold's constitutional rights. The State Department, like other government agencies, created its own censorship department, and worked with a university group called the Virality Project to stifle the speech of Americans, including Dr. Gold. Judge Doughty wrote:

[T]he State Department’s Global Engagement Center (“GEC”) . . . works closely with . . . the Virality Project [which] targeted domestic speakers’ alleged disinformation relating to the COVID-19 vaccines . . . The Virality Project flagged the following persons and/or organizations as spreaders of misinformation . . . Dr. Simone Gold and America’s Frontline Doctors . . . [Emphases added].

The Surgeon General’s Office, CDC and HHS all joined the State Department in supporting the Virality Project, as detailed by a NY Post report on the lawsuit filed against Joe Biden and other federal officials and agencies, by the States of Missouri and Louisiana, which led to Doughty's ruling:

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whose lawsuit is shattering Biden administration coverups, described the program: Federal health officials in the Surgeon General’s Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services collaborated in a “censorship enterprise called the Virality Project, which procures the censorship of enormous quantities of First Amendment-protected speech.”

You'll be censored and you'll pay for it

The government also funded the censorship group with taxpayer dollars. The Post report continues:

The latest Twitter Files installment focuses on Stanford University’s Virality Project, which federal agencies bankrolled to engage in “detecting and mitigating the impact of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines.” 

The Virality Project, partnering with other federal contractors, sent weekly “anti-vax disinformation” reports to Twitter and other social media companies. Mike Benz, president of the Foundation for Freedom Online, notes that the project was “deputized by [Homeland Security] to censor millions of . . . opinions . . . about COVID” . . . The Virality Project had several federally funded partners, including the Pentagon-funded Graphika. [Emphases added].

Even if it's true 

The government support for the Virality Project is particularly egregious in light of the revelation that they specifically targeted “true” medical information:

Disinformation warriors worked overtime to suppress “false” claims about the side effects of COVID vaccine, especially the true claims. Since the Food and Drug Administration officially (and speedily) approved COVID vaccines, any reports of side effects were automatically disinformation.

The Virality Project recommended that social-media companies suppress “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy.” The project “routinely framed real testimonials about [vaccine] side effects as misinformation, from ‘true stories’ of blood clots from AstraZeneca vaccines to a New York Times story about vaccine recipients who contracted the blood disorder thrombocytopenia.” [Emphasis added].

Permanent ban?

A shady, private group was thus permitted to bring the full weight of the government against targets they flagged, like Dr. Gold, to remove their true statements from the public sphere. This extraordinary breach of the constitution may be blocked permanently, once this case reaches trial. After reviewing the mountain of evidence already compiled against Joe Biden and his co-defendants, the court concluded:

The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits on their claim that the United States Government, through the White House and numerous federal agencies, pressured and encouraged social-media companies to suppress free speech. Defendants used meetings and communications with social-media companies to pressure those companies to take down, reduce, and suppress the free speech of American citizens . . .

The evidence presented thus goes far beyond mere generalizations or conjecture: Plaintiffs have demonstrated that they are likely to prevail and establish a causal and temporal link between Defendants’ actions and the social-media companies’ censorship decisions. 

Or is it more apt to conclude, “It ain't over 'til it's over"?