Berenson v Biden gets stronger

Even though the media - which now admits the censorship of 2021 - is still pretending it doesn't exist

On Monday, Joe Biden’s zombie presidency will officially be over¹.

Berenson v Biden, my lawsuit over the effort by White House and Pfizer officials to make Twitter ban me in 2021, will go on.

And the admission from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg last week of the immense pressure his company faced that year from White House censors only strengthens our case. Time has not been kind to the hysterics who insisted they had to destroy the First Amendment to save the United States from Covid.

Yet even as the same elite media that championed social media censorship in 2021 now begins to question it, they won’t mention Berenson v Biden. I take their silence as a compliment - evidence of their embarrassment and the strength of my case.

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(The fight for free speech isn’t over. In fact, it’s just begun.)

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In legal parlance, Berenson v Biden is “fully briefed.” Both we and the defendants have had made our written arguments before federal Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke, who is hearing the case.

In September, we filed an amended complaint with new facts that Elon Musk’s X and other sources had provided. The defendants responded with motions to dismiss the complaint.² In November we responded to their motions, and last month they filed their responses.

Now Judge Clarke has three main options: to let us move forward with the case and begin discovery against the defendants as well as make them answer questions under oath, to dismiss the lawsuit, or to schedule oral arguments to hear more from both sides before deciding.

Obviously, we hope she finds our written arguments strong enough to let us move to the “discovery” stage of the case without an oral hearing, but if she schedules one, James Lawrence - my lawyer - is fully ready to make his case.

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A ruling allowing the case to move past the motion to dismiss does not mean we will necessarily reach a jury.

Civil lawsuits include an intermediate stage called the “motion for summary judgment” phase, in which either side can argue it has presented a strong enough case to win without a jury trial. Usually, it’s the defense that moves for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiff simply hasn’t found evidence to back its claims.

But that will be months or years off; the motions to dismiss come first. And even at this stage, particularly in federal court, judges require plaintiffs to provide hard evidence of their claims.

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We have done so in droves.

Berenson v Biden focuses on my claims, of course, but its 94 pages provide the most comprehensive picture of the efforts in 2021 to deplatform vaccine skeptics. Those included the heavy pressure that top executives at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, faced from the White House in 2021.

The government’s pressure on Meta is directly relevant to my claims, because Andrew M. Slavitt and Rob Flaherty, two Biden Administration officials who are defendants in Berenson v Biden, were personally involved in them.

And so last week, when Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan on Rogan’s podcast of the extraordinary federal pressure his company had faced in 2021, James Lawrence and I took note. Zuckerberg said that he believed the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment and might even have broken the law:

[The White House] also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard, to take down the things that were honestly were true. Right? I mean, they they basically pushed us and and said, you know, anything that, says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down...

But the first amendment does apply to the government. That's, like, the whole point. Right? It's the government is not allowed to censor this stuff. So at some level, I do think that, you know, having people in the administration calling up the guys on our team and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is, like, it's pretty bad. It sounds illegal."

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Last Monday, we filed a letter with Judge Clarke asking that we allowed to include the new evidence in our complaint:

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Naturally, the defendants disagree.

They apparently would like us to go to the trouble of filing an entirely new amended complaint to include this information, and start the litigation clock all over again. Delay is the friend of the person with something to hide.

Obviously, we hope Judge Clarke sees things our way. But either way, Berenson v Biden is more than strong enough to survive the motion to dismiss.

But I admit I am frustrated the same media and public health types who pretended in 2021 that Facebook and Twitter were making their own decisions independent of federal pressure still won’t admit what happened to me, or report on my case.

As I tweeted on Thursday:

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No matter.

I still believe that one day - maybe when Berenson v Biden gets past the motion to dismiss, maybe when a jury rules in my favor - the media will have to admit the truth about how the government and Pfizer conspired to censor me.

In the meantime, we wait for Judge Clarke to rule.

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Many of you have generously supported Berenson v Biden. If you’d like to do so:

On GiveSendGo

On GoFundMe

You can also Venmo me at Alex-Berenson-3

Or send a check to James Lawrence at Envisage Law, 2601 Oberlin Rd # 100, Raleigh, NC 27608

I am grateful for any donation - no matter how large or small. The defendants have essentially unlimited litigation budgets - and if and when we move into the discovery phase, the case will truly get expensive.

1. I know, I know, in reality he hasn’t been in charge for a long time. But he won’t even be occupying the White House anymore.

2. A bit of legal miscellany: the “private” defendants also filed motions saying we should not have been allowed to amend the complaint at all, while the government did not. Though the legal arguments are different, the different motions effectively serve the same purpose from the defense point of view. It is nearly impossible that Judge Clarke would reject our right to file a new complaint and then allow the EARLIER complaint to move forward.