Trump sues Twitter to get account reinstated, claims Dems ‘coerced’ platform into banning him

Former President Donald Trump filed a new lawsuit on Friday asking a Florida federal judge to restore his Twitter account, claiming that the platform was “coerced” into banning him by members of Congress who pressured the company following the January 6th incident at the Capitol.

The former President filed for a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, stating that Twitter’s censorship amounts to a violation of the First Amendment because the platform exercises “immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous” power over political discourse in the U.S.

Trump alleged in the filing that Twitter is acting according to Democrats’ directive as they, “repeatedly encouraged Defendant to censor and restrain Plaintiff’s views, or face catastrophic legal and regulatory consequences.”

Twitter’s internal policies and criteria for banning an account remain unclear, and some believe that vagueness is intentional. After all, a former U.S. President has been banned while members of the terror groups like the Taliban and separately, the Chinese Communist Party are allowed to remain active.

After the January 6th riot, Twitter determined that then-President Trump’s tweets posed  “the risk of further incitement of violence,” but something doesn’t add up.

The Taliban, historically noted for inciting violence and killing innocent men, women and children, were allowed to remain active on Twitter as they seized Afghanistan this summer.

“Over the weeks that followed, Twitter allowed the Taliban to tweet regularly about their military conquests and victories across Afghanistan. The Taliban’s Twitter account is active to this day,” the filing states.

“Defendant is liable for its own speech as well as its own actions. When Defendant works as a partner with the government to censor its Users’ First Amendment rights, Defendant is legally accountable for its deeds. … Defendant’s false statements posted on Plaintiff’s Twitter account are unfair trade and deceptive practices, as Users joined Twitter with the expectation that they would be treated fairly and without slander,” the filing  reads.

“While government officials are permitted to express their, or the government’s, preferences about what a private company should or should not do, they cannot exert coercive pressure on private parties to censor the speech of others,” the filing continued, alleging that Democrats and the Biden administration “have subjected social media companies and their CEOs, including Defendant, to increasing pressure to censor speech disfavored by them, and to promote their favored speech, or else face catastrophic legislative and/or regulatory consequences. … As such, Plaintiff’s censorship was an unconstitutional deprivation of Plaintiff’s free speech, in that the censorship was in response to government coercion.”

At this point in time, a good portion of Twitter users including those who support former President Trump or those who have used the platform to openly discuss the efficacy and pros and cons of the vaccine, have likely experienced a shadow ban or censorship of their content thanks to a new push by the Biden administration to become more involved in the private company’s bidding.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki toed the administration’s coronavirus policy line in July admitting the administration’s push “to engage with [social media platforms] to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies” before singling out “the false narrative that remains active out there about COVID-19 vaccines causing infertility.”

Biden, ever-so eloquent, bluntly claimed that Facebook was “killing people”.

Tech platforms are expected to argue that Trump’s ban is not permanent, but Facebook for example, another social media giant wielding massive amounts of political power in their possession of an even larger audience, banned Trump right up to the 2024 presidential election.

Facebook’s ban could be a massive blow to Trump’s second term ambitions because it severely limits the audience and voters he can reach.

The former president called for “an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing, and canceling that you know so well.”

In the meantime, conservatives have turned to other platforms like Parler and GETTR to share their thoughts and opinions, uncensored online.

“While many Republicans think we should take one course, many Democrats think we should do the exact opposite. We’ve faced criticism from Republicans for being biased against conservatives and Democrats for not taking more steps to restrict the exact same content. We have rules in place to protect free expression, and we will continue to apply them impartially,” Facebook said in a statement to the Washington Examiner, in response to the frequent criticisms it has received.

Trump did not immediately provide comment to any news outlets on the filing, expected to fuel speculation of a 2024 run.

Meanwhile, uber leftist journos are already combusting over the possibility of Trump’s return.

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