The White House last year pressured Instagram to remove a fake account that parodied Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The news emerged Thursday when the attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana filed a joint statement on discovery disputes, and asked the Louisiana District Court to compel the Department of Justice to turn over communications between high-ranking administration officials from the White House, State Department, FBI and others and major social media companies.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry in May filed suit against President Joe Biden and other top White House, officials accusing them of working in tandem with social media giants to censor free speech.
On Thursday, the two attorneys general said communications already provided included an email from Clarke Humphrey, the White House's digital director of the COVID-19 response team, requesting that Instagram pull down a site that made fun of Biden's top medical adviser.
"Hi there — any way we can get this pulled down? It is not actually one of ours," Humphrey wrote in the July 20, 2021, email.
Meta-owned Instagram immediately complied with the request, the New York Post reported, and removed the account. It's unclear who operated the parody account.
"Yep, on it!" an Instagram official quickly replied to Humphrey.
That was just one of "a number of documents" already received "that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we're not done," Schmitt said in a Friday release.
"The Department of Justice is cowering behind executive privilege and has refused to turn over communications between the highest-ranking Biden Administration officials and social media companies. That's why, yesterday [Thursday], we asked the Court to compel the Department of Justice to produce those records. We're just getting started — stay tuned," Schmitt added.
Landry also issued a release.
"When the federal government colludes with Big Tech to censor speech, the American people become subjects rather than citizens," Landry said. "The USDOJ must not be allowed to hide behind the vail [veil] of executive privilege, especially when there is already compelling evidence that the people's government colluded with these social media companies to suppress their right of free speech."
Other emails showed that a senior Facebook official sent an email to the surgeon general stating, "I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward."
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