Sauer Grapes

The U.S. Supreme Court will deliver the fruits of his verbal wrath.

Enough.

Former Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer gave a federal appeals court a piece of his mind last week. Representing the plaintiffs, he argued on behalf of his state, the state of Louisiana, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Jim Hoff, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, and Jill Hines. The case is Missouri v. Biden.

The plaintiffs are asserting that the federal government in the form of the White House, the CDC, HHS, the FBI, the FDA, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, and other government actors engaged in “the most massive attack against free speech in the United States’ history….almost exclusively target[ing] conservative speech” regarding the government’s Covid policies and election integrity.

The attacks against Americans by the federal government, said Sauer, consisted of “public pressure campaigns, private meetings, and other forms of direct communication.”

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the free acts of speech.” That’s what George Washington said on March 15, 1783. The plaintiffs quoted him in their brief before the District Court that first heard the case.

The judge in that court Terry Doughty ruled in favor of Sauer and those he is representing. The day he handed down his decision was July 4, 2023.

In a sweeping preliminary injunction that forbid the federal government from meddling in Americans’ free speech rights, Judge Doughty wrote that “The United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ ” Among other things the government had ordered suppressed on social media were jokes.

Jokes.

Here’s what happened—over a long period of time senior Washington officials again and again and again contacted senior social media company officials telling them to take down certain posts. That wasn’t all. Officials at the highest levels threatened severe legal action against those companies if they failed to lick the government’s boots.

Here’s how Sauer described how the government behaved:

“I want to start by asking the court to imagine a scenario where senior White House staffers contact the book publishers—Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble—in the United States, and they tell them, ‘We want to have a book burning program, and we want to help you implement this burning program. We want to identify for you the books that we want burned, and by the way, the books that we want burned are the books that criticize administration and its policies,’ and suppose they said, ‘We want to be partners in this book burning effort.’

“When they get didn't get the cooperation they wanted, for example, one time they said, ‘Hey, here's 12 authors we want you to pull off the shelves, and burn these. They are the really bad ones. You got to burn those books,’ and the booksellers probably said, ‘We don't really want to do that.’

“Then, two days later, the White House press secretary was at the podium and said, ‘These booksellers need to burn more books, and the President supports a robust antitrust program to go after them, so they need to do more to go after these books.’

“Later, they started sending emails that contain implied threatening communications like ‘Oh, you haven't burned enough books. You haven't let us help you identify the books we want you to burn, and, therefore internally we're considering our options about what to do about it,’ and when they lose their temper, they use the F-bomb against the booksellers.

“Then all of a sudden in the middle of July of 2021, there's a one-two-three public punch where the White House Press Secretary and the Surgeon General stand at the podium, and they said, ‘These books are poison, and we are going to hold you accountable—a word that the District Court found expressly  carries with it the threat of consequences—for letting these books be on your shelves.’

“Then a few days later the White House Communications Secretary also goes public, and she says, ‘We're still exploring legal liability against you, because you haven't burned enough books, and we're looking at repealing a piece of legislation that gives you a huge subsidy worth billions of dollars, if you don't burn more books.’

“Then suppose all the booksellers decided the game wasn’t worth [not complying? audio transcript is unclear], and they started complying, and that's exactly what you see here in the record here. In July of 2021, you see the platforms, having resisted the White House pressure for a significant time. They’ve complied a number of issues, but they’re holding out on certain issues. All of a sudden, there's those public threats combined with a private pressure campaign that has lasted for months and months, and you see the platforms just giving in, and you see them essentially from then on agreeing with whatever the White House and the Surgeon General demanded on those particular issues.

“In particular, the White House had said, ‘Deplatform these specific speakers—[New York Times reporter] Alex Berenson, because we think he's the epicenter of disinfo that radiates out to the persuadable public.’ In other words, the most persuasive speakers, the ones who were most effective at rebutting the government's preferred message, the White House is privately saying, ‘Take those people down! Tucker Carlson—why aren't you deboosting a video by Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who is one of the most prominent critics of the administration?’

“What you see is the platforms complying. They're under what the District Court aptly described as ‘unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world,’ and apparently they comply.”

What is the government’s position? “The President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections,” said the President’s press secretary.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case. It will decide whether the government will subdue free acts of speech.

For stories similar to this one, buy my book Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory.