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ACLJ Representing Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA Against Biden Administration in Major Corruption Lawsuit

ACLJ Representing Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA Against Biden Administration in Major Corruption Lawsuit

By 

Jordan Sekulow

|
August 31, 2023

4 min read

Free Speech

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The ACLJ now represents renowned conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and his youth-oriented, grassroots organization Turning Point USA. We plan to file a massive federal lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of Kirk and others who have been censored online.

Before the 2020 election, Kirk had millions of followers on social media. But after President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) began suppressing conservative social media accounts, Kirk lost hundreds of thousands of followers. Such Deep State interference violated Kirk’s First Amendment right to free speech.

When did this unlawful censorship begin? After the media promoted rampant false claims that Russia had stolen the 2016 election, the Obama Administration shifted its focus to foreign election threats.

When the Mueller Report found zero evidence of Russian collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia, the CISA broadened its scope of foreign threats to “domestic misinformation.” Following this, it began clamping down on online information that it considered dangerous.

As we understand, the DHS eventually equated what it labeled as “online misinformation” to committing a cyberattack to interfere with any election. Then the DHS and CISA pressured social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to censor conservative messages.

Such message-throttling is a gross violation of the First Amendment, and the government has put its thumb on the scale of censorship. We already filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Biden Administration after the FBI pressured Facebook to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.

ACLJ has agreed to file a massive federal lawsuit against the Deep State to stop the suppression of conservatives on social media and for damages for Kirk and Turning Point USA resulting from the unconstitutional suppression and shadow-banning.

Kirk joined the broadcast to give us his firsthand account of what’s happened to him and Turning Point USA.

Kirk first began noticing that his message wasn’t reaching his followers during the 2020 presidential election. At the time, they had one of the largest conservative Twitter accounts in social media, with 120k–140k retweets a day, but then it started to taper off during the election cycle. And then after January 6, he truly felt his social media freefall after being put on a “do not amplify” list:

This language started to get introduced, and obviously, a new regime took the Oval Office, where they considered my views and the views of half the country – and more than half the country, in my opinion – to be that of domestic violent extremism. And if you look at the DHS documents that have been made public and you look at the Twitter files, I was put on a “do not amplify list” on Twitter. That’s a fact . . . . The federal government labeled my account and Turning Point USA – and many others – for censorship. And the federal government is not allowed to shut up the citizen.

Turning Point USA wasn’t the only conservative organization targeted. Other victims of this government-funded targeting include the Heritage Foundation, the Christian Broadcasting Network, Fox News, and many more.

Conservatives used to have a voice in the marketplace of ideas, but then the government squelched their opposing viewpoints. The government tipping the scale in free speech is illegal, un-American, and a betrayal of everything America stands for.

Kirk also detailed how he was locked out of his Twitter account during the week of the election because he tweeted about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Twitter deemed Kirk’s message to be Russian disinformation.

Aside from Kirk’s voice being suppressed, how many other conservative Americans were silenced online? And how many Americans just gave up using social media for fear of legal repercussions or having their opinions censored?

We already have 16 cases against the Biden Administration, and we plan on filing a new federal lawsuit against the Deep State. We must not allow the federal government to continue censoring conservatives. Future presidential elections and the constitutional republic depend on preserving the First Amendment.

Our new case reflects why we launched our Life & Liberty Drive. It’s been a great success so far, but we are still short of our goal. Midnight tonight is the deadline to have your donation doubled instantly. Donate today to defend life and liberty – including our newest federal case on behalf of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA against the Deep State.

Watch the full broadcast below:

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