News/Commentary

‘URGENT’: New Twitter Files twist on whether Biden admin. pressured platform to ban over COVID tweets

June 2, 2023 | | Print Article

Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has dropped a new addition to the “Twitter Files” following news that “Twitter’s own lawyers” knew they would be unable to defend the company’s “censorship policies” surrounding his reporting on COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines — reporting that ultimately led to Berenson being banned from the platform prior to Elon Musk’s acquisition of the site.

As BizPac Review reported back in August 2022, after Musk reinstated his account, Berenson announced on Fox News’s now-canceled “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that he was going forward with a lawsuit against the White House for violating his First Amendment rights.

“I plan to sue the White House and probably other officials, too,” Berenson explained at the time. “I told you last year at about this time, after Twitter kicked me off, that I was going to sue Twitter and that I thought I had a pretty good case, and people mocked that. A federal judge who was appointed by Bill Clinton, by the way, agreed it was a good case, and that led to my being reinstated on Twitter a few weeks ago, or Twitter reinstating me. They were forced to a part of a settlement I reached with Twitter.”

“I’m going to sue the White House,” he continued. “I think I have proof that they did violate my First Amendment rights, that they forced Twitter to act as a state actor, in other words as essentially an arm of the federal government.”

True to his word, Berenson did file a lawsuit that specifically named President Biden, and on Thursday, he shared a revealing update.

“URGENT:” Berenson tweeted, “Twitter’s own lawyers believed the company could not successfully defend its Covid vaccine censorship policies against my lawsuit over its 2021 ban of my account.”


“Twitter was likely to lose Berenson v Twitter, my federal lawsuit against the company for banning me over my mRNA vaccine reporting, Twitter’s lawyers concluded after reviewing internal documents related to the ban,” he wrote. “The documents, whose details remain secret but which the lawyers called ‘problematic’ and ‘sensitive,’ also show Twitter’s most senior executives disagreed over its decision to censor me in the summer of 2021.”

Though it’s a definite win for Berenson against Twitter, questions still linger over the extent of the government’s hand in his ban — the subject of his promised lawsuit against the government.

“The newly revealed secret debate inside Twitter’s former leadership highlights the still-unanswered question of whether Twitter banned me because it feared government or corporate retribution for allowing me to continue to publish on its site,” he wrote.

“That issue is central to Berenson v Biden, my new lawsuit against the @WhiteHouse and @Pfizer for allegedly conspiring to violate my First Amendment rights by coercing Twitter to ban me,” he stated. “It also impacts Missouri v Biden, about broader federal social media censorship efforts.”

What was in those documents remains unclear, but it was enough for Twitter to back down:


What is clear is that things changed for Berenson on Twitter after Biden entered the White House.

“In 2020 and spring 2021, Twitter encouraged me to use my account to cover Covid and the mRNA jabs and defended my right to do so to critics,” he tweeted. “But it abruptly reversed course in summer 2021, after federal officials demanded censorship and @JoeBiden said social media companies were ‘killing people’ by allowing their users to question the shots.”


As Berenson explained, he received three warnings against criticizing “jab mandates” and the “safety and efficacy of the shots” before being kicked off Twitter in August 2021. Four months later, he sued the company “alleging it had broken its own rules and violated my rights when it banned me.”


The lawsuit was settled in July 2022, and his account was restored.

“But Twitter has never explained why it censored me,” Berenson stated. “The analysis its lawyers made suggests it did not believe it could convince a jury it could.”

“My settlement remains secret (though I have asked @ElonMusk, who bought Twitter in October 2022, after the settlement was reached, for the right to publish it),” Berenson continued. “But according to the email chain, my demands included restoring my account, giving me special protection against future bans, turning over communications and complaints Twitter had received about me from outside sources, and allowing me to publish whatever it gave me.”


Those concessions caused concern behind the scenes at Twitter:

“The documents Twitter provided to me in the settlement last year showed that both the White House and Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb pressured the company to censor me over my reporting,” Berenson tweeted.


“Those revelations became the core of Berenson v Biden, which I filed in April in federal court in New York, naming six defendants, including President Biden, Dr. Gottlieb, and Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla,” he explained. “But the newly revealed emails from Twitter’s lawyers suggest that when it turned over documents to me last year, Twitter used the narrowest possible definition.”


“The company appears to have included only internal discussions that occurred directly from specific external communications,” he concluded. “Did the company’s leaders or other employees discuss how the overall censorship pressures Twitter faced in 2021 should affect my reporting and account?”

“If those documents exist, Twitter’s lawyers viewed them as outside the settlement and did not disclose them, keeping me from seeing them,” Berenson said, adding, “For now.”

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