The Biden administration tried to annihilate the First Amendment through lawfare.
Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) pursued prosecutions based on constitutionally protected speech. While several of the people targeted were Biden’s critics, the prosecutions served a broader purpose beyond merely silencing individuals. The cases explicitly sought to expand the category of expression the government could criminalize.
- The Criminalization of President Trump’s 2021 Capitol Speech
Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted former and future President Donald Trump for “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States” and “Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding.” The indictment stated Trump should be convicted for giving a speech where he told supporters they should “fight like hell” to “peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard.” The indictment also stated that Trump was being charged for his public statements on the social media platform Twitter, where he argued that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.
The indictment flew in the face of the landmark Supreme Court ruling Brandenburg v. Ohio, which held that the First Amendment protects even fiery political rhetoric. Nevertheless, the solicitor general argued the case’s scope to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- The Gag Order on President Trump
After issuing his indictment, Smith petitioned the Court to ban Trump from criticizing prosecutors or the federal judiciary during the election. This was even though opposition to judicial corruption and the weaponization of government was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign and his opponents, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, were frequently giving speeches on the same subject.
- The Criminalization of New Media
Julian Assange was the founder of Wikileaks. An alternative to traditional media, Wikileaks was a service that allowed users to submit documents via an encrypted messaging service. Wikileaks would then upload the raw documents directly to its website, thereby minimizing the risk of editorial bias that comes from legacy media journalism.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her book What Happened, blamed her 2016 election loss on Wikileaks’ publication of damning communications regarding how organizers of the Democratic National Committee colluded with legacy media to weight the 2016 presidential primary in her favor. Then-judge Merrick Garland had his nomination for the Supreme Court rescinded after Clinton’s loss. After President Joe Biden appointed him attorney general, Garland aggressively expanded the prosecution of Julian Assange that had begun under his predecessor, William Barr.
Assange was indicted and imprisoned for years while awaiting trial under the constitutionally-dubious 1917 Espionage Act. The indictment claimed Assange should be convicted because he provided “a cloud drop box” to an anonymous whistleblower and, as reported by Wired, told the whistleblower publicly available knowledge about how “rainbow tables” could guess internet passwords. Garland’s prosecutors did not allege that this whistleblower ever used the algorithm to hack anything. In fact, they were aware of evidence showing definitively that the whistleblower did not.
In an interview with Buzzfeed News, Assistant Attorney General John Demers, a prosecutor in Assange’s case, declared that “Julian Assange is no journalist” — alluding to the common leftist refrain that outlets like Wikileaks should not be subject to the First Amendment’s free press protections because they work outside the structure set up by legacy media.
While targeting Assange, Garland ignored the common practice of legacy media reporters, such as those at The Guardian, meeting directly with members of the intelligence community and encouraging these agents to disclose state secrets. The indictment sent a chilling message that those who practiced journalism, or even repeated readily available public information, outside state-approved channels risked imprisonment.
- The Medical Advice Prosecution
The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama indicted, convicted and imprisoned Mobile doctors John Patrick Couch and Xiulu Ruan using the novel legal argument that they had committed criminal conduct by giving medical advice that contradicted the consensus of establishment medical institutions. The prosecutors argued that jurors should defer to so-called “expert[s]” on what a “legitimate medical purpose” for medicine was, and should not consider whether the individual doctor had a “good faith” belief that there was a “legitimate medical purpose” to give alternative medical advice.
Though the initial actions against Couch and Ruan had begun under then-President Barack Obama, Biden’s Office of the Solicitor General argued for the convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Had the prosecutions’ legal theory been accepted by the high Court, it could have permitted prosecutions for those who advocated against so-called transgender surgeries, the COVID-19 vaccine or even masking.
- The Meme Prosecution
In 2021, the DOJ indicted Douglass Mackey for sharing memes that joked that Americans could vote for Hillary Clinton by text message. The Biden administration argued that by sharing the meme, Mackey had engaged in a “conspiracy” to deny Clinton supporters the right to vote. ZeroHedge reported that, to secure a conviction, prosecutors introduced unrelated memes Mackey had sent many years ago in an apparent effort to convince a New York jury he, in the words of censorship outfit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), was “racist” and “misogynistic.”
The prosecutors could not identify a single person who had been dissuaded from voting because of Mackey’s memes, but insisted in court that this was unnecessary, as anyone could be convicted for stating so-called election “disinformation,” even if the person was a private citizen expressing a personal viewpoint.
The DOJ maintained Mackey needed to remain imprisoned, even as it ignored popular talk show host Jimmy Kimmel telling using the same punchline as Mackey’s meme — but directed at Trump supporters — to an audience of millions.
Conclusion
The Biden administration engaged in a litany of lawfare actions. The above prosecutions, though, explicitly sought to narrow the amount of speech that was protected by the First Amendment.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand they investigate Merrick Garland’s censorship prosecutions. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold government and Big Tech accountable.
