Trump’s DOJ Settles Landmark Twitter Censorship Case While Confirming Biden White House Violated Americans’ First Amendment Rights

Trump’s Department of Justice announced that it had settled the lawsuit, which claims that the Biden administration had pressured X (formerly Twitter) to limit unfavorable speech by an American. The case argued that influencing the social media platform to restrict the disfavored content violated the First Amendment protections under the Constitution of the United States.

According to the Department of Justice’s press release, the decision applied President Donald Trump‘s Executive Order, titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” which acknowledged that “the previous administration trampled free speech rights” by deleting countrymen’s content shared online, often by heavily pressurizing third parties like social media companies to remove, limit, or silence speech opposed by the federal government.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said, “The Biden Administration engaged in blatant viewpoint discrimination, wielding power over social media to kick conservatives off X completely,” further adding that such “injustices” have come to an end under Trump’s leadership.

In addition, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Civil Division also assured that the department would continue to retract “past abuses” of the First Amendment. He stressed that illegitimate government pressure on social media companies to restrict speech doesn’t align with the Constitution or the country’s principles.

Meanwhile, Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, called it an important landmark decision in the fight for free speech in the country. She referenced a time when state and federal officials encouraged social media platforms to restrict large amounts of protected speech. “The proper antidote to speech one doesn’t like is more speech,” she added.

The department stated that an agreement with the plaintiff would avoid the need for further legal proceedings in the case.

According to Reuters, court filings in 2023 suggested that a U.S. federal judge limited certain agencies and officials in President Joe Biden‘s administration from contacting social media firms to control content on their platforms. The order followed a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri.

It claimed that the U.S. government went out of its way to encourage social media firms to handle posts it believed could increase hesitancy toward vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic or influence elections.

The ruling also barred government agencies such as the DHHS and the FBI from contacting social media firms to push for the removal or suppression of content. This applied to content protected under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

Before this, in 2020, a BBC report suggested that X asked people to avoid posting links to a New York Post story that contained screenshots of emails from April 2015, allegedly sent and received by Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from a Ukrainian energy company’s adviser, allegedly thanking him for inviting him to meet his father in Washington.

At the time, the platform warned that the link was “potentially unsafe” for users trying to access it. It was later clarified that the sharing was restricted as it contained “hacked materials.” Notably, neither Biden’s election campaign accepted the claims, nor did the emails provide evidence of the meeting.