Censorship 'ultimately traceable' to ex-WH official treated as Biden 'intermediary': updated suit

A week after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted senior Biden White House officials "repeatedly pressured our teams for months" in 2021 to remove posts they disliked related to COVID-19, leading Facebook to make "some choices … we wouldn't make today," a plaintiff in a newly updated lawsuit says his censorship can be proven "ultimately traceable" to one of them.

Former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson, who coerced Twitter in court two years ago to reverse his permanent suspension for saying COVID vaccines don't stop infection or transmission, filed an amended complaint Wednesday against President Biden, current and former officials and two Pfizer leaders, citing new evidence obtained from Congress and X, formerly Twitter.

He says emails show that Facebook treated Andy Slavitt, former senior adviser to the COVID-19 response coordinator, as an "intermediary" with the White House a month after he "officially resigned" in June 2021, despite Slavitt's lawyers claiming he continued badgering social media platforms only in his capacity as a "private citizen" to censor Berenson.

"Welcome to the edge case," Berenson wrote in his most recent newsletter, saying his evidence can clear the high bar the Supreme Court set for unconstitutional jawboning of platforms by government officials when it denied a preliminary injunction in Murthy v. Missouri in June.

"Twitter’s closest competitor viewed Slavitt as speaking for the government at the same time he was pressuring Twitter over me," he said. "Timing is not a problem," as it was for censored doctors and an activist in the Supreme Court case, because "Twitter took no public action against me before the federal government began pressuring it."

"Slavitt was at the center of the conspiracy" to deplatform Berenson, the amended suit says. He "remained close" to then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and had a "close relationship" with former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member. 

Pfizer sponsored Slavitt's podcast, in which he interviewed the company's CEO Albert Bourla in late July 2021 – after leaving the White House – and where Gottlieb was "repeatedly a guest" during and after Slavitt's White House tenure. Murthy, Gottlieb and Bourla are also defendants.

Slavitt's attorneys didn't respond to Just the News queries for their response to Berenson's characterization.

Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, a former U.K. deputy prime minister, first endured Slavitt's broadsides while the latter still worked in the White House. 

"Just got off hour long call with Andy Slavitt," Clegg told colleagues on April 18, 2021, and he was "outraged" that Facebook refused to remove a post "directly comparing Covid vaccines to asbestos poisoning."

Clegg wrote on July 19, 2021, that he had "spent the last several days pretty well non stop on this Covid/Biden furore, including tel [sic] calls with Andy Slavitt on several occasions." 

The next day Clegg shared "Andy Slavitt’s overnight advice on how to understand where the WH is coming from" and said the former White House official was "trying to be helpful by passing on our [point of view] to the Surgeon General before the Fri meeting."

Slavitt repeatedly appeared to give the impression he was speaking for the White House after formally departing, telling Clegg in a text that "WH wants FB to come clean with how many people see these [disfavored vaccine-related] posts and what it’s doing about them."

While he told Clegg "I want to really stay out of the middle and want you guys to communicate," Slavitt told a podcast July 29, 2021, he's "on the phone with" the White House, CDC, state and foreign governments "as often as people need me and usually that’s on a daily basis." The CDC acknowledged days earlier that COVID vaccines don't fully stop transmission or infection.

The former acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama, Slavitt was already a public health celebrity when President Biden tapped him. 

The Minnesota Star Tribune touted its native son a month before the 2020 election, saying that with "600,000 Twitter followers and the phone numbers of some of the country's most influential leaders at his fingertips, he wields enormous influence on public opinion and public policy regarding COVID-19."

Like President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, Slavitt appeared to promote mistrust of the COVID vaccines under development in Operation Warp Speed because President Trump managed it, then tried to shut down critics of the products after Trump left office.

"Everybody wants a vaccine, but nobody wants a vaccine that people can't trust," Slavitt said on former Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken's podcast before the 2020 election, according to the Star Tribune.

Clegg announced in July that Facebook would roll back its restrictions on Trump's account because he's the GOP nominee again, but Facebook has not stopped suppressing narratives disfavored by the administration Trump seeks to succeed.

Anti-censorship group Reclaim the Net posted screenshots of error messages Facebook users received when trying to share undercover video of Nicholas Biase, chief public information officer for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, calling Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump "nonsense" and a "perversion of justice" to raise Bragg's profile.

"We can’t review this website because the content doesn’t meet our Community Standards," one message says, referring to the Rumble channel for conservative host Steven Crowder. Facebook allowed the video for another user but then removed it for violating community standards, saying it "looks like you tried to gather sensitive information from others."

Louder with Crowder CEO Gerald Morgan said the video's viewers reached out to complain that Facebook wouldn't let them share it, which he verified. 

"Facebook is back in the business of making sure you do not see information that pertains to the election and Donald Trump, and this administration's … attempt to get Donald Trump and not tell the truth," Morgan said.

He marveled that a week after Zuckerberg admitted Facebook demoted the New York Post expose on Hunter Biden's laptop in the 2020 election, which "we shouldn't have" done and won't do again, Zuckerberg is "back up to his old tricks again. What are we to believe, Mark?" 

Morgan thanked Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski, who claimed he fled Europe after France arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, and X owner Elon Musk for not suppressing the video.

Biase told the Post he "regretfully made some statements in a private and social setting that don’t reflect my views about two local and state prosecutions," claiming he was just trying to "please and impress someone I just met," the operative for Crowder's "Mug Club." 

Pfizer executive Jordon Walker made nearly the same excuse, calling himself a "liar … trying to impress a person on a date," after Project Veritas shared undercover video of him explaining the company's "directed evolution" plan to keep COVID-19 a "cash cow." It was also suppressed.

Facebook did not answer when Just the News asked for an explanation of the error messages shown to users who tried to share Crowder's Rumble video.