Trump Files Hilariously Mendacious Brief In Tech LOLsuits

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Time for a little check in on the Trump tech LOLsuits this Friday afternoon, since the former president has been cluttering our inbox with alerts of new filings in his never-ending quest to get Twitter, Meta, and YouTube to take him back.

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Last July, Trump sued the three social media giants for tortious deplatforming. The theory of his case is that refusing to let him live-tweet Fox and Friends every morning is actually a First Amendment violation. Now, some might quibble that only the government can violate the First Amendment. But Trump’s lawyers have an answer for that one, and it is that Twitter, Meta, and YouTube are in fact agents of The Man because they are secretly carrying out the edicts of Rep. Adam Schiff, who has threatened to yank Section 230 immunity if they don’t silence Trump.

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Which sounds crazy as we type it, because it is literally crazy.

In February, Twitter filed a statement of recent decision, citing a recent holding on the same fact pattern in the same district. A bunch of anti-vax weirdos who sued YouTube for axing their videos — alleging that the site had became a government agent following orders from Rep. Schiff to boot the horse paste orgy sites — got tossed out for failure to state a claim.

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“Simply put, ‘[t]he publicly expressed views of individual members of Congress – regardless of how influential – do not constitute ‘action’ on the part of the federal government,’” US District Judge Jon S. Tigar wrote.

Not to be outdone, Trump’s crack legal team would like to highlight its own case. To wit, they’re drawing the court’s attention to a recent Ninth Circuit holding in a suit brought by Twitter against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

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After the site booted Trump, the AG made a series of public threats and launched an investigation, purportedly into possible false statements about the company’s content moderation policy. Twitter sued to block the query, alleging that it was retaliatory and stifled the company’s freedom of speech. The trial court dismissed the case as unripe, since the AG’s document demands were not self-executing, and further process would be necessary before the company was actually compelled to cough anything up.

The Ninth Circuit agreed: “This case is not prudentially ripe. The issues are not yet fit for judicial decision because OAG has not yet made an allegation against Twitter, because the facts are not yet developed, and because Twitter need not comply with the CID, can challenge it if it is enforced, and could have challenged the CID in Texas state court.”

What does this fact pattern have to do with Trump’s stupid tech suits, other that Ken Paxton is only going after Twitter because he thinks he’s Will Smith charging onto the stage at the Oscars to defend his wife Donald’s honor?

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Well, nothing.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump’s lawyers from lobbing it toward the docket three times yesterday with the notation “That decision rejected First Amendment protections for alleged misleading statements by Defendant Twitter, Inc.”

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No, it really didn’t. Like, not even close. That’s a total misrepresentation by multiple officers of the court to multiple federal judges.

Ah, well, nevertheless.

Trump v. Twitter [Docket via Court Listener]
Trump v. Meta [Docket via Court Listener]
Trump v. YouTube [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

Donald Trump, First Amendment, Government, Twitter