House GOP lends support to big tech collusion lawsuit against Biden

A dozen House Republicans have thrown their weight behind a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of unlawfully colluding with tech giants to limit Americans’ free speech.

The GOP wing of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government filed an amicus brief late Monday in the multi-state battle against the White House.

“[E]vidence shows that the Biden Administration has relentlessly pressured private entities—sometimes in cooperation with other private entities—to censor speech that the Administration disliked,” the brief said.

“On issue after issue, the Biden Administration has distorted the free marketplace of ideas promised by the First Amendment, bringing the weight of federal authority to bear on any speech it dislikes—including memes and jokes,” the lawmakers added.

The brief was filed with the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as it considers a White House appeal of a Louisiana judge’s July 4 order barring executive branch officials from contacting social media companies.

That order, which was later put on hold by the appeals court, stemmed from a civil suit brought last year by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt — now a Republican US senator from the Show-Me State.

The examples of censorship cited by Landry and Schmitt included the stifling of The Post’s reporting on first son Hunter Biden’s laptop and discussion of the so-called “lab leak theory” during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The extensive investigation of the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has uncovered smoking gun documents showing how Big Tech and Big Government worked together to stifle free speech online,” subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a statement. “We know through the Facebook Files that the Biden Administration directed Big Tech companies to censor speech the government disagreed with, and launched a pressure campaign when companies did not comply with these censorship orders quickly enough.

“The First Amendment is among our most precious rights as Americans, and we must continue to fight to preserve it,” he added.

In recent weeks, Jordan has released internal Facebook documents and communications contradicting government claims about official contacts with the social media giant.

On Monday, for example, Jordan released information showing San Francisco-based FBI special agent Elvis Chan lied during his deposition before Landry and Schmitt about the extent of his communications with Facebook officials after The Post published its first report on the now-first son’s laptop hard drive on Oct. 14, 2020.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.