Ep 315 | We Need a Cultural Shift Toward Free Speech | Guest: Jenin Younes

Summary

Kibbe on Liberty: Episode 315 – We Need a Cultural Shift Toward Free Speech with Janine Yunus

Release Date: January 16, 2025
Host: Matt Kibbe, Blaze Podcast Network
Guest: Janine Yunus, Attorney at the New Civil Liberties Alliance

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Introduction

In Episode 315 of Kibbe on Liberty, host Matt Kibbe engages in a profound discussion with Janine Yunus, an esteemed attorney from the New Civil Liberties Alliance. The conversation centers around the pressing need for a cultural shift towards free speech in the United States, delving into the complexities of government involvement in social media censorship and the landmark litigation shaping this discourse.

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Missouri v. Biden: An Ongoing Battle for Free Speech

Janine Yunus provides an insightful update on the Missouri v. Biden case, a pivotal lawsuit challenging the government's role in pressuring social media companies to censor content critical of COVID-19 lockdown measures. Initially filed in early 2022, the case underscores allegations that high-ranking officials, including President Biden and his administration, coerced platforms into enforcing restrictive content policies.

Yunus details the case's trajectory, highlighting the initial dismissal due to standing issues but emphasizing the breakthrough achieved through extensive discovery. "We got 20,000 pages of documents in discovery," Yunus reveals (02:04), showcasing internal communications that reveal the depth of government influence over private tech companies. These documents include alarming emails where officials like Rob Flaherty expressed urgent demands for content removal, stating, "Are you fucking serious? Get the shit off the platform right now" (07:48).

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Policy Reversal: A Sign of Change?

The episode explores Mark Zuckerberg's unexpected policy shift away from third-party fact-checkers, which Janine interprets as a response to governmental pressure. "It was the first time there's been such an explicit admission," she notes (02:37). This admission, articulated in a letter responding to congressional investigations, hints at the intricate and coercive relationships between tech moguls and government entities.

Yunus contends that Zuckerberg's change is partly motivated by the fear of litigation, as acknowledging government pressure could open the door to lawsuits alleging First Amendment violations. This strategic maneuvering illustrates the precarious position tech companies find themselves in when balancing compliance with government demands and maintaining operational autonomy.

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Discovery and Evidence: Unveiling the Censorship Industrial Complex

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden. Yunus emphasizes the critical nature of uncovering internal communications that demonstrate sustained and coordinated efforts to suppress dissenting voices. "There was a coordinated campaign over months browbeating the companies into adopting these policies," she explains (07:07).

The revelation of emails from various government agencies, including the White House and the CDC, strengthens the legal case against the government's involvement in censorship. Yanus highlights that some of the censorship efforts originated before Biden's administration, suggesting a longstanding agenda to control public discourse through tech platforms.

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Related Cases and Broader Implications

The conversation extends to related legal battles, such as Alex Berenson's lawsuit, which parallels Missouri v. Biden in its claims of government-induced censorship. Yunus outlines how these cases collectively aim to dismantle the censorship apparatus by exposing the government's entanglement with private tech companies.

Furthermore, the discussion touches on the broader implications of such litigation, including the potential dismantling of the Chevron Doctrine—a legal principle that grants deference to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Yunus proudly announces a recent victory in overturning Chevron deference, stating, "The court reversed its precedent and said, no more Chevron doctrine" (43:00). This landmark decision empowers courts to assert greater oversight over federal agencies, curbing their expansive regulatory powers.

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Cultural Shift and the Future of Free Speech

Yunus and Kibbe express concern over a cultural shift that increasingly tolerates censorship, particularly on the political left. Yunus remarks, "As long as people aren't willing to fight, the Constitution is only as good as the paper it's written on" (39:15). They advocate for a renewed cultural appreciation for free speech, warning that complacency may lead to entrenched governmental control over public discourse.

Looking ahead, both are cautiously optimistic about forthcoming political changes, such as the Trump administration potentially appointing sympathetic agency heads who could further dismantle the censorship framework. "The Supreme Court provides greater safeguard when it comes to protecting our civil liberties," Yunus adds (36:12), underscoring the importance of judicial support in upholding constitutional rights.

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Legal Achievements and Ongoing Priorities

Janine Yunus highlights the New Civil Liberties Alliance's successes, particularly the overturning of Chevron deference in the Loper, Bright, and Relentless case. This victory is poised to revolutionize litigation against federal agencies by limiting their interpretative authority and enhancing judicial independence.

Yunus also mentions upcoming challenges, including maintaining momentum in Missouri v. Biden and similar lawsuits, as well as navigating the uncertainties posed by procedural hurdles and potential political shifts. "We are going forward, and Alex Berenson's lawsuit is going forward," she affirms (16:23).

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Final Thoughts: The Road Ahead for Free Speech

The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to engage in the fight for free speech. Janine Yunus emphasizes the collective responsibility to defend constitutional liberties, noting that effective change hinges on sustained public advocacy and vigilance against governmental overreach.

Matt Kibbe echoes this sentiment, reflecting on the personal toll of censorship and his commitment to revitalizing platforms for free expression. "If it's not, and if it becomes a censored platform, I think it undermines the entire business proposition that Elon Musk has proposed," he states (42:16).

Together, Kibbe and Yunus underscore the urgency of addressing censorship at its roots, advocating for legal reforms, cultural recognition, and unwavering defense of free speech as pillars of a truly free society.

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Notable Quotes:

• Matt Kibbe: "I'm still of two minds on the question of whether or not it was just the government forcing social media companies to comply with their censorship." (02:04)

• Janine Yunus: "We're trying to show that these entities were actually not operating independently of the government." (26:23)

• Janine Yunus: "The Supreme Court provides greater safeguard when it comes to protecting our civil liberties." (36:12)

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Resources and Further Information:

• New Civil Liberties Alliance: nclalegal.org
• Janine Yunus on Twitter: @JENINYOUNES
• Kibbe on Liberty Podcast: Subscribe on BlazeTV

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This episode serves as a crucial examination of the intersections between government authority, private enterprise, and personal liberties, urging listeners to remain informed and proactive in safeguarding the foundational principles of free speech.

Transcript

[Kibbe]

Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking to Janine Yunus of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. She's one of the attorneys in the iconic Missouri v. Biden case. This is the case about the censorship industrial complex and the government brow beating of social media companies to take down any posts critical of the lockdown regime. She's going to give us an update and we're going to talk about Mark Zuckerberg's sudden change of heart when it comes to censorship. Check it out. Welcome to Tibby on Liberty. Janine. Hey, how's it going?

[Janine Yunus]

Good. Nice to see you again.

[Kibbe]

I definitely want. It's been a while since we talked and we reconnected at Jay Bhattacharya's organized conference at Stanford University. I think that was in December.

[Janine Yunus]

October.

[Kibbe]

October. That's how much I know about time. And I had to be there because it was sort of a watershed moment for Jay. But I didn't even fully comprehend then what a big deal it was that he got the new president of the university to actually come up on stage and say it's cool that we're having a conversation about something that's controversial, which apparently is radical in today's university environment.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

But you were giving an update on the case that you've been litigating for years now.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, almost three now. Yeah.

[Kibbe]

And it's now called Missouri v. Biden.

[Janine Yunus]

That's right.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. It's changed and I want to get all into that, but it strikes me that an important moment happened recently when Mark Zuckerberg announced a fundamental change where he's getting rid of so called fact checkers who are should be called censors and replacing it with a more open system. And he sort of offhandedly, and he's done this before, but he offhandedly said at the end and I'm misquoting, but he's like, yeah, but the government made me do this, so we're not gonna let that happen again. Yeah, that's like a big deal.

[Janine Yunus]

It is. And it was the first time there's been sort of such an explicit admission. I think he wrote a letter pursuant to a demand from a congressional investigation over the summer where he said, he kind of tried to equivocate and he said, well, the government pressured us, but ultimately the decisions were our own. And so actually both sides in the litigation have used that letter because he was. I think he was trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

[Kibbe]

Of course. Yeah, there's a lot of politics in his decision. I'm sure.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. Well, there's politics, and I think there's also fear of litigation because if the companies were acting as sort of instruments of the government and they concede that, then I think they can be seen sued on First Amendment theories, probably for damages like civil rights violations. So I think they are trying to walk a line to prevent getting sued on, like, either side.

[Kibbe]

It's a tough position, but I feel like they put themselves in that position by letting it happen in the first place.

[Janine Yunus]

Absolutely. Yeah. And he did, and we now have evidence of that. And now that he's explicitly admitted it, of course, that strengthens our claims. Of course, whether or not we pursue these claims is dependent on what happens under the new administration, which has indicated it might have a different approach.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. And we've talked about this before, and I'm still of two minds on the question of whether or not it was just the government forcing social media companies to comply with their censorship. And there's a lot of evidence for that, that case. And you see some pushback from things exposed by the Twitter files. But on the other side, and I was just interviewing Matt Taibbi for our series the COVID up, and he talks about something, and I wonder if you have an opinion about this, but there's been a shift in journalism away from this adversarial. We're going to hold the government accountable, we're going to hold other newslets accountable when they get something wrong to this idea that there should be one narrative, top down, centralized. We're all in this together, and we're basically going to take our talking points from our leaders, which ultimately are government officials. So I'm like, are they browbeaten into submission? Are they useful idiots? Or are. Are they part of the team when it comes to the censorship industrial complex?

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, I think part of the team. I mean, in terms of the mainstream media, I think they're definitely just sort of. They've sort of become arms of the government, which is ironic because the point of the media, and that's why they get constitutional protection, is they're supposed to be, you know, the Fourth Estate and be a check on government power. But instead, and I think this was sort of a slow shift or gradual shift over time. But I think when Trump took power, power, most of the establishment media saw it as their job to, you know, try to take him down. And so they just ended up acting as sort of extensions of the Democratic Party's aims, which. And then I think the same was true of the heads of the tech companies at the Time, not Elon Musk now.

[Kibbe]

But yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and this was. How much was your case predicated on what Elon Musk did versus various FOIA requests and efforts that you guys and others had done?

[Janine Yunus]

Well, so the initial case was predicated on mainly on public statements, for obvious reasons. That was sort of the evidence we had at the time where you had high up officials, including Biden himself, but also his press secretary at the time, Jennifer Psaki, and the Surgeon general making statements basically saying, we're going to hold the companies accountable unless they censor vaccine misinformation to our liking. And it was our contention that that was enough to get discovery and figure out what was going on behind the scenes, which ultimately we did get and showed much more extensive censorship and on a really broad array of topics. It wasn't just Covid, and it had been going on, you know, for even longer. It's very complicated. I mean, we have. We got. In Missouri, we got 20,000 pages of documents in discovery. So this is, you know, we're looking at really a lot of. A lot of material from different agencies, different government actors. And some of it actually was going on prior to Biden taking office. But I don't think that Trump was directing the censorship. I think some of the agencies were doing it on their own. And then Biden really escalated it and also tried to coordinate the censorship operation between agencies.

[Kibbe]

It's a point you made at Stanford. I just rewatched your talk, and you pointed out that it wasn't at all clear that Trump was aware of the censorship. But it's this obscure agency within Homeland Security, cisa, which is something.

[Janine Yunus]

I forget what Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. So it was initially supposed to protect physical infrastructure, bridges and stuff from terrorist attacks, and then also the Internet from terrorist attacks. But then they decided that part of their job was also to protect our cognitive infrastructure. Their director said that. And that's, you know, so.

[Kibbe]

Well, that's not Orwellian at all.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. So protect our cognitive infrastructure, which is people's thoughts from misinformation.

[Kibbe]

I'm not for banning words, but we should ban that phrase from the lexicon, because that's insane. And the more I dig into the lockdown industrial complex, I realize that a lot was going on at cisa, which is something I had never heard of before. But as you sort of peel back the onion, you realize that so much of this censorship infrastructure is a vestige of the war on terror and the Patriot act and creating of Homeland Security and all of that, and they didn't have enough terrorists to go after, apparently. So they turned all those weapons on the American people. So. So they were sort of locked and loaded when lockdowns happened. And they were obviously censoring other things, like the Hunter Biden laptop story and all sorts of things. But this particular one is the basis of your litigation. Remind people the history, because this didn't start off as Missouri v. Biden. There's been iterations of this, and there was a setback in a court case, but now you're. Now you're still working on this and facing discovery, but give people the history.

[Janine Yunus]

So that they remember, okay, so it's a little complicated, but I'll try to keep it simple. So one of few people brought cases, including me, about three years ago at the beginning of 2022, alleging that the federal government had been unlawfully involved in censorship, especially around Covid on social media by using coercion and pressure. And this was, as I said, mainly based on the public statement statements, because obviously we, you know, didn't have access to private government emails without a court order. And then those lawsuits were tossed out, basically kind of foreshadowing what ended up happening in the Supreme Court. But I'll get there. The courts said the companies had content moderation policies in place prior to any evidence that the government was involved. And so you can't show that your clients were censored because of the government. They very well may have been censored because of the. The company's own policies. And that's called standing. Like, you can't. They couldn't trace their injury to the government. I think that's a really ridiculous standard. And at the very least, you have to allow them to get discovery in order to show that, because how are we going to show that Mark Changizi or Daniel Coats and who are plaintiffs in my case were censored by the government unless we can at least get access to some email showing the level of involvement, you know, so I think the court's put us in kind of a binding position where it's like, you know, heads, heads you lose, tails, the government wins kind of thing, right? But the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri shortly thereafter brought a similar challenge on behalf of the citizens of their states. And they wanted to have individual plaintiffs join in part for standing purposes because it's hard for states to maintain standing. And so they asked me, because they knew of my involvement in the issue, to join on behalf of Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Couldorf, who framers of the Great Barrington Declaration and then two other individuals. So we did get discovery. The judge was much more understanding and I think saw the validity of our points. And when we got discovery on an emergency motion called a preliminary injunction motion, we found just, you know, tons of substantiating evidence. Some of the most important emails came from the White House. There was someone named Rob Flaherty in particular Andy Slavitt, who were basically saying, like, if you don't change your policies, if you don't take this kind of content down, we're going to come after you. We're going to find ways to hold you accountable, which would be financially devastating for the companies. And some of the most shocking emails, they were saying things like, we don't even care if this is true. Like, you know, get down those stories of adverse vaccine effects. This is stoking vaccine hesitancy, which I think is, you know, should strike most Americans. It's highly problematic. So we got a preliminary injunction in that case on July 4, 2023, which was sort of a historic achievement. It was like a new issue. The injunction was very sweeping and prohibited the government officials from coercing, pressuring, working with the tech companies to censor protected speech. The fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld motion most of the injunction. The government appealed that. And we went to the Supreme Court which sort of echoing the earlier court decisions, found that the plaintiffs didn't have standing for very similar reasons, like maybe their speech would have been censored absent the government's involvement. And I think the standard is ridiculous. They've basically closed the courthouse doors to most plaintiffs. And I think they allow, as the dissent pointed out, they allow sweeping censorship so long as it's done in secret. And another really. Which it usually is exactly, another really problematic point was at the end they actually said they kind of acknowledged that they hadn't done a complete review of the record and said the plaintiffs want us to review this massive record without really making a preliminary showing of standing. And you really need to look at the record and understand these documents to see what was going on. This wasn't like one email or one statement. This was a coordinated campaign over months browbeating the companies into adopting these policies or sort of expanding their interpretation of existing policies.

[Kibbe]

The Free Portrait of an Artist is the new documentary by Free the the story of Cuban born artist Carlos Luna who fled socialism under Castro to find his free life in America. You, you can watch it [e-mail] C I V L.com throughout the month of December for free at civil.com check it out. One of the things that's interesting in all of this, he's not a colleague, but your peer may be. That's not even right either. But Alex Berenson has a second case, and he was talking about that at Stanford University. Are you able to explain to people what that is? I know you generally understand his case. You're not involved, right?

[Janine Yunus]

No, I'm not involved. But we, you know, I read the filings and stuff, and it's very similar allegations. He has a, he has a very strong case. He and RFK Jr. I think, because they were actually explicitly targeted, like government actors said, get these guys off the platform. Platform. So that kind of cures some of the defects that the court pointed to in its decision. On the other hand, one of the major factors the court found was that the plaintiffs couldn't show future censorship, which you have to show to get an injunction. Ironically, if you're suing for money damages, which is sort of to compensate you for past harm, you don't have to show future harm. But they're not suing for that. They actually, like Jay and Martin were like, we don't want to, you know, we don't want the taxpayers to have to pay for this. We want, we just want this to not happen anymore. So the irony is the court said you have to show a likelihood of future harm and then set that standard very high, like saying it had to be on the same topic, indicating it might have to be on the same topic. We're actually arguing that's not the interpretation, that's the government's interpretation. So saying, well, Covid's over, so these guys aren't going to be censored on Covid anymore. So you can't show a likelihood of future harm. We're arguing in that. So our case is going forward in the district court despite media, media representations, because it's a different standard. So the court is letting us get discovery on the underlying lawsuit. But that aside, we're arguing that. Sorry, totally lost my train of thought on that.

[Kibbe]

Is discovery a big deal?

[Janine Yunus]

Oh, it's a huge deal because.

[Kibbe]

So what, what, what could you find and how, how deep can you go?

[Janine Yunus]

Well, it depends on what the court lets you do. But the court let us get quite a bit in preliminary discovery, which is unusual, but I think he thought the allegations were pretty shocking, as most people have. So, I mean, getting access to emails from high up people in government is, you know, it's unusual and it's been very revealing. We saw things that of course, they would never want to be public literally cursing at the companies. There was one email where Rob Flaherty is like, are you fucking serious? Get the shit off the platform right now. So it's. It's very important.

[Kibbe]

Sounds like an offer you can't refuse.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, exactly. So it's very important for proving allegations like these. Unfortunately, the court, you know, the Supreme Court didn't help us here. But in any event, we are going forward, and Alex Berenson's lawsuit is going forward. But this issue of future harm, where the government is saying it has to be on the same topic, and you can't show because Covid's over. So our contention is that it shouldn't have to be on the same topic. If you're engaged in opposition speech, you're a target for censorship. All of our plaintiffs continue to engage in, you know, questioning narratives, whatever they may be. And the court's standards, just unreasonable, prohibitive.

[Kibbe]

As much as I've obsessed about COVID censorship, it's not really about COVID at all. No, it's about whether or not the government can determine. And, like, when I was talking to Taibbi, he's trying to parse the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Again, more sort of Orwellian terms because they're not defined. But do you. Is there legally a distinction between these things? Do those words matter?

[Janine Yunus]

I mean, I don't really think they matter when it comes to whether or not the censorship is okay, because the First Amendment protects really most speech, except for a few narrow exceptions like child porn and direct threats. I mean, if, you know, if you post, like, go kill so and so, because he this, to me, that might be a direct threat, but most of the speech that they're trying to get at is protected. So they say disinformation is like intentional lies. Misinformation is. You're not purposefully trying to lie, but you've picked up on a narrative that's untrue. And then malinformation is maybe the most Orwellian one. That's information that's true but is being used out of context. So they would say that about the vaccine stuff, right? Like, well, you might have suffered adverse events from the vaccines, but you're not citing the statistics showing that most people don't. So therefore, that's mal information, which is ridiculous, because, you know, if you're saying I suffered a heart attack because after I got the vaccine, they would probably call that malinformation, Right?

[Kibbe]

Yeah. Well, that's. That. That was one of the exposures of the Twitter file, is that. Yeah, they were very purposefully censoring true information because they didn't like the narrative at more.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, and we actually got that first, I think before the Twitter files, there was around. Our discovery was right around that. I think there was a, you know, little bit of the Twitter files sort of seized on some of what we had found to take it further.

[Kibbe]

But, you know, here we are, It's January of 2025, and I @ least have been quite optimistic about some of the nominees that President Elect Trump has announced. And I'll start with Jay Bhattacharya, your plaintiff and you're now collaborator and friend. It's interesting to me, and this is another thing. I'm going to put this out there for you and others to research at the same time that Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci were talking about a devastating takedown of Jay Bhattacharya and the Great Barrington Declaration Twitter. And I wonder about the timing, because the timing would be quite interesting. Twitter decides to blacklist Jay. And I'm like, I think that those things are intimately related, but I need to know the date, if it's possible, as to when the blacklist came down from central commercial.

[Janine Yunus]

So I think the blacklist came down a little bit later, actually. I don't think the timing quite lines up because Jay was not on Twitter. I don't remember when he got on, but it was a while. It was. He was not on Twitter when he wrote it. And then I think it might have taken him six months or a year before he got on.

[Kibbe]

Oh, interesting.

[Janine Yunus]

So there was actually lag time. But the Great Baron.

[Kibbe]

Why are you blowing up my grand conspiracy theories?

[Janine Yunus]

It's the lawyer. I have to get up the. I did. Yeah. But. But the Great Barrington Declaration was suppressed on social media. The Facebook page was taken down and it was clearly like when you tried to search for it on Google, the result, it was very hard to get.

[Kibbe]

Maybe. Maybe that's the link.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, that I think is. And he was placed on the trends blacklist the moment he joined Twitter, which suggests to me that there may have been government involvement telling. If this guy gets on the platform, make sure to censor him. So that's what we've been trying to show. And that, you know, that was one of the weaknesses ostensibly that the court has pointed to was like, the timing doesn't entirely line up and like, well, how are we going to be able to show that if we can't get more discovery. We don't know what was going on behind the scenes.

[Kibbe]

Well, there's a lot of smoking guns. If not, if not proof. Rand Paul tells me that, you know, Fauci was going to the CAA on a regular basis during all of this. Other machinations. So my working theory that I'm trying to prove is that the COVID industrial complex, the lockdowns and the mandates and all that stuff, and the censorship industrial complex and all these agencies that have been exposed by your work and others, FBI, Homeland Security, DoD, probably the CIA. That these things are more alike than anyone's willing to acknowledge.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, for sure. I mean they're very intertwined. And you know, you said earlier that Covid it's more of a symptom than that was sort of, I think what alerted a lot of people to this issue. And the reason, I think is that a lot of the censorship that happened before and continues to happen is like on national security grounds. And it's a little harder, I think, for people to see clearly that what's being censored is first amendment protected speech. And that's another whole area that's. That's sort of complicated because like for instance, the State Department does a lot of censorship of misinformation, you know, supposedly that are national security threats. But then when you look at it, they're often just. They've sort of interpreted it very broadly to say like anything foreign. So some guy in Ethiopia who says he doesn't think the vaccine works, well, that's like a national security threat, which I think is completely ridiculous. And I don't think we've ever dealt with whether or not foreign speech is kind of first amendment protected if it doesn't fall under one of these exceptions.

[Kibbe]

Yeah, there's something, I'm blanking on the name now. The global something.

[Janine Yunus]

Global Engagement Center.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. And that was nominally at least based in the State Department.

[Janine Yunus]

It is, yeah. We actually have a case against them too, that's sort of similar, that's also in discovery right now.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. And that. And that was. That was all these agencies were talking about, like intelligence, national security.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

Not really public health. And that's another sort of interesting thing about this story that it struck me that the cdc, nih, niaid, all of these agencies that were front facing in this conversation, it really seemed like they were in a lot of ways taking their cues from these other agencies.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, they absolutely were. And one of the cdc, I think was one of the earlier ones, earlier agencies to involve itself in Covid censorship It's pretty clear that they started right at the beginning of COVID like even January, February of 2020. And they were speaking with the tech companies about taking down misinformation about COVID And that arrangement was different. One thing that makes the case complicated is it's not all the same kind of conduct. So while a lot of people in the White House were very aggressive, and I would characterize their behavior as threatening and pressuring, the CDCs was more of a cooperative working relationship with the tech companies. And that sort of raises a separate question. Is that okay? Even if we all accept that the coercion isn't okay, can they cooperate together? I think the answer is no. Under the First Amendment, the government can't be in the business of trying to police speech, even if the third, the sort of whatever host of the speech is willing to do so. But it's definitely a separate legal question. But the CDC was involved much earlier, and they actually. Their emails were there saying, we're going to sort of implement the same. No, sorry. It's the tech companies saying, the Census Bureau has used these portals to help with misinformation will give you access, too. So the Census Bureau may have been one of the first agencies that was involved in this enterprise. And obviously, for reasons I don't quite understand.

[Kibbe]

What is the virology project?

[Janine Yunus]

Oh, the Virality Project.

[Kibbe]

Yeah.

[Janine Yunus]

Item.

[Kibbe]

Yeah, I said it wrong.

[Janine Yunus]

That's a very important issue. There's a sort of broader entity at Stanford University called the Stanford Internet Observatory, and they deal with misinformation. They ostensibly just study it, but that's bullshit. That's not what they do. They involve themselves very heavily in directing the companies to take down, you know, misinformation and disinformation. The Virality Project came out of that, and it was specifically dealing with misinformation and disinformation. And they actually were responsible for one of Couldorf's tweets being taken down, which we're continuing to show as a link, because these entities were set up by the government. They were funded by the government. There were a lot of people going back and forth. There were people using government email addresses while, like, working at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Just very. So they're. They're trying to argue that they are not government entities, that this. This was totally separate, this was totally private, lawful conduct. And we're arguing. No, these were. These. These were just sort of funnels for the government's censorship enterprise. And so they should be held responsible.

[Kibbe]

As government actors, government operatives that. That but it creates the patina of independent third party. Like it's pretending to be academic because it's at universities, but it was just censors that were filing in and out of government agencies.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, exactly. And to make a sort of basic point I'm sure, you know, but may not be obvious to everybody, is, you know, private actors, you can't really hold them responsible under the First Amendment. They're entitled to, you know, engage in center censorship operations if they want. But if they're working with the government, then that raises First Amendment questions because if they sort of become just alter egos of the government, then I think you can hold them responsible under the First Amendment. So that's part of what we've been trying to prove is that these entities were actually not operating independently of the government, you know.

[Kibbe]

Oh, yeah, no, you know, it gets. It gets very gray and blurry and you know, I'm someone that used to think there was a relatively bright line between private enterprise and government. But you discover that the pharmaceutical companies, for instance, have very entwined relationships with the government agencies that are supposedly overseeing them and regulating to the point where they share intellectual property rights and there's royalties going to government workers at places.

[Janine Yunus]

Like the nih, like Scott Gottlieb is a good example. Pfizer government.

[Kibbe]

Well, that's more to me, that's more typical revolving door where obviously corporations are going to hire government officials to make sure that they can game the system to their advantage. I'm talking about something even more intimately entwined. And I wonder how much of this is going on with tech companies as well, because so much. And I'll just talk about COVID but there's far more examples of this. They were spending millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising for their positions on Covid, primarily get vaccinated. But also the whole wear a mask and all that stuff that end combined with government contracts to these big tech companies, probably primarily through intelligence and national defense, where they're buying all of our data so they can spy on us, basically. At what point is that not a private enterprise anymore? Because they're almost without the government telling them what to do. They're almost responsible to their revenue streams to do as they please.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, I mean, it's a very difficult question. I think it's sort of a new era because we really haven't dealt with this kind of thing.

[Kibbe]

We're not allowed to say the F word. But it is very much government control of the means of production when it comes to these worlds and trying to parse that. It goes back to Zuckerberg's comment. He's got business concerns because I think young people don't like Facebook in large part because it's a controlled conversation. It's not a good place to be. But he's also got these masters. Do I work with my customers? Do I work with the Trump administration, which is coming in quite critical of everything that I did, or am I still in bed with all of this revenue that probably has strings attached?

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. Well, I think it's clear that his announcement made clear what he's decided since it happened, like three weeks before the inauguration.

[Kibbe]

Right.

[Janine Yunus]

I don't think the timing is a total.

[Kibbe]

Not a coincidence. Yeah. Regular viewers of Kibbe on Liberty already know how obsessed I have been with the pandemic industrial complex and all of the stupid, authoritarian, and downright evil things that the government did to us during COVID 19. Well, I'm proud to announce a new investigative series that looks to get to the bottom of all of that. It's called the COVID up, and I'm producing it in cooperation with BlazeTV. The only place you're going to see this is BlazeTV. So go to fauci coverup.com kibbe and use the code FAUCILIED for three thirty dollars off your annual subscription. Do it now. The truth is out there. But back to Jay Bhattacharya and the delicious karma of the guy that was targeted by Francis Collins, head of nih, is now going to take over the nih. To me, that and I would say the Marty Mercari at the fda. I don't know all the names and I haven't vetted them all, but there's clearly a seismic shift. RFK@HHS that is a seismic shift away from the censorship industrial complex, particularly when it comes to public health.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. I mean, two of the plaintiffs are now going to head major agencies. RFK Jr. S case has actually been consolidated with ours in the lower court. So it's. I mean, I don't know if there's ever in history been a situation where, you know, when you sue the government, you're suing the office. So if you sue Anthony Fauci, you're actually suing, like, whatever his title was at niaid, Director of niad. So when he goes then the new person, you're suing them. So Jay is suing the nih, and now he's going to be the director of the nih. I don't know. I don't think this has ever happened.

[Kibbe]

Will he have to testify against himself?

[Janine Yunus]

My guess is he'll have to have to make some adjustments to the lawsuit. But people have asked me what's gonna happen. I'm like, I don't know. I don't think ever in history has someone sued an agency and then become the head of that agency. So it's an interesting question.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. And in terms of foreign policy and intelligence, it's perhaps from my libertarian point of view, it's perhaps more of a mixed bag. But obviously Tulsi Gabbard is the national security advisor. I don't even fully understand this world. Like, I don't know how it all fits together. But it also strikes me from what I've seen him say, Kash Patel at the FBI is also someone that's going to be sympathetic to unraveling this surveillance censorship industrial complex. Are you hopeful? Have you thought about that at all?

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, actually, Trump gave a speech a couple of years ago. It was going around on social media recently and I thought it was recent and then it turned out it was a little old, but. And he was basically saying, you know, if I get an office, I'm going to undo all of this and I'm going to put safeguards in place. And he had some really good ideas, basically making sure that the agencies adhere to certain guidelines that they're not telling the tech companies what to take down. I can't remember the details right now, but so I am hopeful. And actually, in another ironic twist, the nominee for Solicitor General is my co counsel in the case, John Sauer. So it's hard for me to imagine that DOJ will continue to defend these cases. That would be very odd indeed.

[Kibbe]

And also, Rand Paul is becoming the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. And he, he has told me time and again when we've had conversations about the endless roadblocks, he can't get the information that he asked for as a ranking member, which is outrageous. I'm naive enough to think that congressional oversight is a constitutional responsibility. And when the agencies. And he says there's a difference. It's hard enough to get information from the public health agencies.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

But when it comes to intelligence and national security, they're just like, no, screw you.

[Janine Yunus]

Oh, yeah, it's. I actually worked on a congressional investigation about a year and a half ago on this topic. And it's, they make it very difficult and, you know, they'll redact a lot of stuff saying it's like national security or falls under some other exception. And it's hard to challenge, you know, say, well, I don't think this is redactable. If you don't know what's rejected, how can you explain why? So there are all sorts of ways they have around making sure that their bad conduct isn't exposed.

[Kibbe]

So hopefully, and I realize I'm keenly aware of all the roadblocks to seeing any of this happen, but between some of these new agency heads dismantling a lot of this stuff from from within, I do think that obviously Rand Paul's very motivated, but I think that Republican majorities might be motivated for a very different reason, that so much of this censorship was targeting them and their political prospects. So there might be a little bit of vengeance in here, but I'm not sure you can ever get good policy for good policy reasons. You have to get it first for the entire political landscape around it.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

Hopefully they take this stuff on.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. One reason, so, you know, I am somewhat optimistic, especially in the short term, but one reason I'm a little wary of the fact that we don't yet have a good Supreme Court decision, which is still possible because of the procedural posture we're in, is just that, you know, political winds can shift and this administration may, you know, you can enter what's called a consent decree where they sort of acknowledge that what happened was wrong, they're not going to do it, but that could really be undone by another administration. And I'm also wary because I think a lot of the people who claim to care about free speech, when they don't like the speech in question, they're very happy to become the censors.

[Kibbe]

And so are you saying there's a hypocrisy in politics?

[Janine Yunus]

I know it's shocking to most people. And that's, you know, that's one reason I like the law and I think the law is important, is when you get a Supreme Court decision. Generally speaking, there's been some undoing precedent recently, but for the most part, it's a much more I think it provides much, much greater safeguard when it comes to protecting our civil liberties.

[Kibbe]

Yeah, that's, that's why we keep talking about this, obviously why you're doing it. But, but my shock at I kept saying that it turns out that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not the barrier to authoritarianism that I thought they were, that they turned out to be quite leaky during a panic, during a crisis. And that is sort of the loophole in so much of this stuff. If it's a public health, what's the Word. I'm thinking of an emergency. Emergency is the word they use.

[Janine Yunus]

Well, the problem is that everyone is a person in the end, and even judges. I mean, so at the beginning of COVID we're in 2021, I brought a number of vaccine challenges to vaccine mandates, and they mostly lost because. And I think the courts were very. Just themselves scared. A lot of the judges are older, frankly. I think a lot of their personal feelings factor into this, and they want everybody vaccinated. And there have been some better decisions recently. I think now that things have calmed down, now that it's beyond question that the vaccine doesn't stop transmission. So mandates don't really make a lot of sense. But we had that evidence at the time. Actually, the courts just kind of refused to look at it because the government would claim that it wasn't. It wasn't settled science, even though it really was. But so there have been better decisions now. And I think there's an irony to the fact that while the emergency is taking place, it's very hard to rely on the courts to protect our liberties afterwards. You can kind of get good precedent. So I think as a civil liberties attorney, there's kind of a struggle. You're like, well, I want to bring the case now while people are being subject to these violations. But on the other hand, I'm likely to just create bad precedent because everyone, including the judges, are panicking.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. And the last thought on this, my disappointment that more Americans weren't just yelling at the top of their lungs about the violations of their First Amendment rights. I think there's been a cultural shift where you're losing more so on the left. It's more pronounced on the left, where they seem to want to be able to force people to sing from the same song sheet, which is anathema to the American experiment and certainly the First Amendment. There's plenty of Republicans that are guilty of the same crime. But do you see a way to get the American people to pay attention to this again, to appreciate that if they lose this, we lose the only thing that holds our government in check?

[Janine Yunus]

I mean, yeah, in the end, it does boil down to us. As long as people aren't willing to fight, the Constitution is only as good as the paper it's written on, or not even. I forgot exactly what the expression is. But there does have to be a cultural appreciation for free speech and civil liberties more broadly. Maybe what it takes is that people on the left have their speech censored, as might be happening a little bit now for them. To see why we don't allow censorship in the first place. So, yeah, I think the cultural shift is troubling. I'm glad that Zuckerberg acknowledged some of the ramifications of embracing censorship operations. Maybe that will change things a little bit.

[Kibbe]

But I started. So I have a public Facebook page which used to be. It used to be almost a million and a half people.

[Janine Yunus]

Oh, wow.

[Kibbe]

And it just. It went from massive engagement six, seven years ago to virtually no engagement. And I think my. My advocacy against lockdowns had a lot to do with that. But I've started. I'm now posting pictures of my cat on that page to say, hey, do you guys remember me? And I'm actually getting responses like, I haven't seen your stuff in years.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

I don't know if they've changed very much yet, but. But I'm willing to take him at his word for now and see if I can actually engage an audience that wants to hear from me again. We'll see. We'll see.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. I mean, I also think what's happening with Twitter now. I mean, I don't know what your opinion is, but I think the algorithm is weird. It's clearly Musk seems to be engaging in some sort of personal vendetta stuff. I think it sort of highlights why it's a problem to have our First Amendment or free speech rights rest with a couple of billionaires.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. Well, I think ultimately I can't think of a better model unless it's based on some sort of uncontrollable blockchain type technology. And I know a lot of people are working on that. And I also know the government's doing everything it can to kill that sort of technology because it wouldn't be controlled. Because if you can make it uncomfortable enough for Elon Musk and personal persecute his businesses and all the things that they've already started doing to him, you could see where they would be more comfortable thinking they could bring that one guy to heel. But if it's a distributed ledger and they can't take anybody out, you're talking about real free speech. I'm still willing to give. I don't engage in any of these arguments because I don't spend the time to fully understand who might be being censored and who isn't. I still think my X account has got throttles on it that precede X, but didn't get fixed with X. But at the same time, I'm also hopeful. And this gets back to people. The business model needs to be the widely held belief by X users that it is a relatively free platform.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

And if it's not, and if it becomes a censored platform, I think it undermines the entire business proposition that Elon Musk has proposed.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kibbe]

Well, that's my hope. Yeah.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah. And I guess an optimistic read on Zuckerberg's shift in policy, too, is that maybe he felt there was competition coming from X being more of a free speech platform. And so he. That's motivated him, which. That's. I guess that's what we need.

[Kibbe]

So we talked about Missouri v. Biden. What other priorities at the New Civil Liberties alliance do you want to shamelessly flag to my audience?

[Janine Yunus]

Well, we succeeded in getting Chevron deference.

[Kibbe]

If people don't appreciate what that is, explain what that is and why it's such a big deal.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, it was. So Chevron was a case from the 80s, and it's basically the court held. And a lot of people don't realize this. I don't think the court saw it as a big deal. This was almost a footnote, but it ended up having massive implications. The court held that when a statute is ambiguous, the court has to defer to the implementing agency's interpretation of the statute. And this just ends up giving agencies. Yeah. Enormous amount of power. And I think it. I mean, the argument that we ended up winning on is it sort of ends up courts aren't really doing their job because they're supposed to be assessing the arguments and doing their own statutory interpretation, not giving, you know, putting the thumb on the scale of one party, which is the government. So in a case called Loper, Bright and Relentless. Our case was relentless. There were two cases that the court determined together. The court reversed its precedent and said, no more Chevron doctrine. So this opens up a whole new world of litigation to, you know, even cases in which the court has previously deferred to the agency, maybe try to undo some of that. So that's definitely one of the things we're looking forward to continuing to work on.

[Kibbe]

So with this, it feels like it puts wind in the sails of any Trump agency head that actually wants to unwind all of this extra legislative, extra constitutional regulation that these agencies have created over the years. Is that true or is they're two different things?

[Janine Yunus]

Can you ask it again? Sorry.

[Kibbe]

So you're pushing on the constitutional and legal side, showing that these agencies don't no longer have the authority to do this kind of stuff. You have new agency heads, many of whom. And you have doge on the outside proposing some fairly sweeping reforms. Does this give the new agency heads, does it help them do that if they want to dismantle some of the regulatory apparatus?

[Janine Yunus]

You know, that's a good question. I haven't thought about it extensively. I mean, because it's sort of a check against agency power. I don't know that it will have that much impact because they would just. If they wanted to do it without this relentless and loper bright, I think they would have been able to do it anyway.

[Kibbe]

Maybe. Think about it this way. So one of the problems I had with some of the better work of the first Trump administration was so much of it was done administratively and then the Biden administration came in in day one and just with a stroke of a pen, replaced it all. But if they scale it back now because of this litigation, maybe the next administration doesn't have the freedom to just do it again.

[Janine Yunus]

Right.

[Kibbe]

I don't know. Like, I'm just speculating that well.

[Janine Yunus]

Oh, that's. Yes, that's a very good point. Yeah. It will be harder then to go back to having so much administrative power.

[Kibbe]

Sorry, I'm thinking out loud.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, me too. Yeah. No, you're. You're absolutely.

[Kibbe]

You're allowed to do this on a podcast.

[Janine Yunus]

No, you're absolutely right about that. I think it's very important for the future. And I should say it's my colleague Jean Vecchione who did these cases. I haven't worked on them much, so he obviously did a great job.

[Kibbe]

Any other cool things?

[Janine Yunus]

So, yeah, we're sort of trying to figure out what the future of the censorship cases are under the new regime. And then I think, well, yeah, we'll figure out where we're going from there.

[Kibbe]

So where do people find their work and your work?

[Janine Yunus]

Their work is. Our website is ncla legal nclalegal.org sorry, the new civil Liberties Alliance. And I'm on Twitter. J E N I N Y O U N E S E S Q Janine Eunes, Esquire.

[Kibbe]

Twitter. You have a new podcast of some kind? I just discovered it today.

[Janine Yunus]

Yeah, it's called Previously Prohibited. I have a code. We just started it a few weeks ago, so we're experimenting.

[Kibbe]

I don't know who she is, but she's a friend of yours back from your public defender days?

[Janine Yunus]

No, no, she is. I actually, we sort of recently become acquaintances from Twitter. We have similar views on foreign affairs and also Covid. So we started corresponding.

[Kibbe]

Cool. Thank you for doing this.

[Janine Yunus]

Oh, thank you for having me.

[Kibbe]

Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about Free the people, go to freethepeople.org.