Thank you for your trust and support!

Your response to yesterday's post about Berenson v Biden has been overwhelming - and heartening. Now, an update on the key facts of the case. Not the law, just what we know happened.

When Twitter banned me and my journalism on Aug. 28, 2021, I knew it shouldn’t have. (So did lots of you.)

I knew the tweet that provoked my suspension hadn’t violated Twitter’s rules. I knew Covid vaccine mandates were coming and the White House hated my reporting. I knew outside pressure had driven the censorship.

I just couldn’t prove what had happened.

Now I can.

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(Yesterday’s offer is still in force - subscribe for a shot at one of 20 signed books. Yes, I raised it from 10 because so many of you have signed up already! And one shot at the world’s best mug.)

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James Lawrence and I filed Berenson v Biden, my lawsuit over the public and private conspiracy - including White House and Pfizer officials - to make Twitter ban me, in federal court in Manhattan in April 2023. We followed up with an amended complaint last month.

But the process known as discovery has not yet begun in the case. Federal courts typically do not allow discovery until they rule on defense motions to dismiss lawsuits. Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke of the Southern District of New York, who is overseeing Berenson v Biden, has followed that path.

So the defendants, including former Biden official Andy Slavitt and Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb, still haven’t turned over any records or communications with each other or government contacts related to the case. Nor have they been required to answer questions in writing or in person and under oath — interrogatories and depositions.

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But thanks to a reporting process that has taken over two years and spanned several channels - and the invaluable aid of Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October 2022 (and has since renamed it X) - I have remarkable evidence of the conspiracy.

We know now:

That Andy Slavitt campaigned to censor me when he was at the White House, secretly calling on Twitter to ban me in April 2021 at a meeting with Todd O’Boyle, a senior Twitter lobbyist;

That in July 2021, just weeks after officially leaving the White House, Slavitt directly introduced Scott Gottlieb to O’Boyle, and over the next weeks, he and Gottlieb secretly and repeatedly pressed O’Boyle to act against me;

That O’Boyle and his boss, Lauren Culbertson, viewed that pressure campaign as part of White House’s broader effort to force social media companies to censor;

That O’Boyle and Culbertson feared the White House might threaten Twitter’s crucial Section 230 immunity from lawsuits and wanted to keep the Biden Administration focused on Facebook;

That even after Slavitt left the White House, Facebook’s top officials viewed him as speaking directly for the Biden Administration on censorship issues on the very days when he was pushing Twitter to censor me;

That in late August 2021, Gottlieb, Slavitt, and Biden Administration digital strategy director Rob Flaherty again contacted O’Boyle, and O’Boyle again told Culbertson they were working in concert;

That Gottlieb approached O’Boyle about me directly to complain that Twitter was still allowing me to post;

That O’Boyle then contravened Twitter’s own procedures to make a junior employee give me a fifth strike for my infamous “It doesn’t stop infection… And we want to mandate it? Insanity” tweet;

And that when they learned of the ban, Twitter’s own top executives said the company should not have censored me and I should be allowed to discuss vaccine mandates.

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(It doesn’t stop infection… but it does stop reporting.)

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None of what I just wrote is conjecture.

We have given the court hard evidence of all of it. You can read the whole complaint, all 94 pages of it, for yourself here. It’s worth a look, if you have the time. It tells quite the story. The road to public health is paved with good intentions. And censorship.

Keep in mind, this is a civil case. Even when we reach trial, we don’t need need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, we just need to convince jurors with a “preponderance of the evidence” — more than 50 percent.

Even more importantly, at this stage of the case, we do not need the same level of evidence that we will need to convince a judge that a jury should hear our lawsuit, precisely because we have not yet had the chance for discovery.

We just need to present reasonable theories supported with specific evidence — “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” in the words of the Supreme Court.

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We have reached that standard.

I know and like the plaintiffs who brought Missouri v Biden, the social media censorship case the Supreme Court largely rejected in June. But we have offered far more facts to support our allegations than those plaintiffs did, and my injuries are far more specific and related to the specific conduct of the defendants.¹

The Berenson v Biden defendants are countering our facts with a dog’s basket of legal arguments that I won’t bore you with here. We will address them in our next filing to Judge Clarke (and I will probably discuss them in a piece then).

But it is vitally important to understand what Andy Slavitt and Scott Gottlieb and the Biden Administration were - and were not - doing.

They want to pretend this case is about their First Amendment rights, that they were simply expressing their disagreement (and disgust) with my views.

Let’s be clear. They have every right to do that.

Even now, I will debate either of those men any time in any forum (as long as it’s live).

They didn’t want to debate me.

They wanted to silence me - just as the federal government was ramping up efforts to force tens of millions of Americans to take mRNA Covid jabs they did not want and that had already proved ineffective within months.

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(Fighting to speak. For myself. And for you.)

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They were willing to violate my rights to do so.

They hate that I caught them, that I assembled this evidence, and that with your help I will not back down. They hate that I am using my Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial to protect my First Amendment rights to speak.

But they can’t stop me.

And we’re going to win.

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I did not offer links to support me and the case directly in yesterday’s email, but a lot of you asked. So, if you would like to make a donation instead of or in addition to subscribing to the Stack, here goes:

GiveSendGo

GoFundMe

Venmo: Alex-Berenson-3 - last four digits of my phone are 1745.

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

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And one last thought: whether or not you give, I hope you will spread the word about the case. The media blackout is deeply frustrating, especially given the stakes here.

But I believe more than ever that the truth is on our side - whether my old friends at the New York Times will admit it or not.

Onward.

1. In addition, the Missouri case was at a different legal stage and required a higher standard of proof. It also had the benefit of what the Supreme Court called “extensive discovery.”