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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to an extra edition of Morning Wire. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Saturday, December 9th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A portion of the following interview aired earlier this week.
--:-- John Bickley: Joining us to discuss the Daily Wire and the Federalist lawsuit against the State Department is Margo Cleveland, an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance who helped author the complaint.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- John Bickley: So, Margo, this lawsuit alleges an unconstitutional censorship scheme by the State Department using private entities. First, what are the key allegations here?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: So the key allegations are that the State Department acted without authority to cause and to fund the censorship of the plaintiff's speech, the Daily Wire and the Federalist Speech, as well as their rights as a press.
--:-- John Bickley: The State Department has a group called the Global Engagement Center, which has its history preventing and countering terrorism and al-Qaeda, things like that. And it shifted to countering foreign influence. But the Global Engagement Center didn't end there. What it started to do was see its mission as countering disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, which I think Americans now recognize is anything the government doesn't want the public to know or believe.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: And what the Global Engagement Center did is it started reviewing all of this technology that is available to cause the censorship of speech. The State Department used funds that are limited to foreign affairs to evaluate over 365 different tools and technologies.
--:-- John Bickley: These are everything from listening technology where you have computers able to see what people are talking about on the internet to ratings technology. So for instance two of the enterprises that the State Department worked with are the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: So our government used its tax dollars to see what type of technology and tools are available for private companies, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, to censor speech. Now, of course, they call it to counter disinformation, mail information. But the bottom line is those tools are used to censor American speech and the American press.
--:-- John Bickley: And what the State Department did is it funded research and infrastructure and helped develop these technologies. It created a platform where all of these tools and technologies that the State Department tested were available. And this platform originally was developed for the .gov and the .mil users, but it was opened up to private tech companies, so all the social media companies.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: And then the State Department invited those companies to come on and test out these tools to see what fit their, quote, needs. Well, the needs are censoring speech on social media. But that wasn't all they did. The State Department then had a liaison based in Silicon Valley who would then visit the tech companies and act as a basically sales representative to encourage the companies to use this technology that would limit the reach, limit the speech, limit the ability for disfavored media to obtain advertisers.
--:-- John Bickley: And probably the clearest example we can see is with the NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index. Right. Now, the State Department might say that they're not the ones actually doing any censoring, but you're arguing that they're, in fact, playing a very active role. They're empowering these third-party entities and encouraging private companies to use them, right?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Right, and it's actually much more than that, and the State Department likely will come back and say, No, it's not us. This case is very specifically focused on what the State Department did, not what the social media companies did, not what these outside censorship enterprises that are making this technology did. This complaint is talking about the State Department conduct. What did the State Department do? The State Department funded technology that reaches American speech and the American press. The State Department helped tech companies further develop that technology. The State Department researched and summarized and looked to see how does this technology help private companies supposedly counter disinformation.
--:-- John Bickley: The State Department created a platform with taxpayer dollars to put this technology on. The State Department invited outside companies in to learn about the technology and encouraged them to test the technology. And then the State Department went to these companies and promoted the technology. So we're not talking about holding the State Department responsible for private censorship. We really just want the State Department to stop this conduct. We're talking about the State Department, through its own conduct, abridging the rights of the Daily Wire and the Federalist.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: What is the lawsuit asking of the State Department? Is it seeking damages or is this more of a cease and desist?
--:-- John Bickley: The lawsuit is not seeking damages. What our clients want is the State Department to stop this unconstitutional conduct. The complaint is asking the court to tell the State Department that it cannot fund private organizations that target American speech and the American press. The complaint is asking the court to tell the State Department, it cannot market, promote, act as a sales representative to this technology, which again, it targets the American press and American speakers.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: So here we actually have two fundamental problems. First, our State Department should have nothing to do with American speech and the American press. The statute that authorizes the State Department to act, authorizes it only to act regarding foreign affairs. And second, the State Department has no authority to promote censorship, to criticize this American speech, and to try to get private actors to adopt technology to silence it.
--:-- John Bickley: What prompted this legal complaint? What brought this issue to light for your group?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: So the New Civil Liberties Alliance, two clients, the Daily Wire and the Federalist, both were able to see the consequences of the censorship that was going on. And some of it started through what we saw with the election and the Hunter Biden laptop which that part of the case is in the Missouri versus Biden case which is now at the Supreme Court where it was kind of squashing the traffic on social media. But as part of that, our clients also saw the publication of these reports that were blacklisting them. And the blacklist is actually pretty ironic because the organizations that are reported or ranked as very reliable, we would have the Washington Post, the New York Times, they got stories about COVID completely wrong. They got stories about the Trump-Russia collusion completely wrong. And the Daily Wire and the Federalist got those stories right.
--:-- John Bickley: So we had reports coming out and the Washington Examiner did a great series where they were showing how these blacklists were used to silence the media that was presenting contrary viewpoints. And this is something that is highly offensive to our clients and it should, frankly, be highly offensive to all Americans.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Final question here. What are the next steps? What do you expect from the State Department and what steps do you plan to take?
--:-- John Bickley: The State Department will probably try to brush this off as something that they have no control over. As we spoke about earlier, the State Department is likely to come back saying, this isn't us, this is third parties. We're just informing them of risks of misinformation, disinformation. But that's not what our complaint is alleging, and we have lots of evidence to back it up merely from open source documents, open source material. We haven't even gotten to discovery. The plaintiff's next step, likely in early January, will be to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to preliminarily order the defendants to stop the funding, promotion, marketing, development of technology that targets the plaintiffs.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: And at that point, we'll be able to go before the court and present the evidence we have. It's going to take a lot longer, though, to get the final conclusion, which will be a permanent injunction to make sure the State Department never does this again.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, Margo, thank you so much for joining us. And obviously, we'll be following this case very closely. Thanks so much for your time.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: You're welcome.
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