19 January 2023
State of Missouri, State of Louisiana, et al., vs Joseph R. Biden Jr.
(see links to below for full Document 178, 178-1, 178-2 and link to full docket this case)
Document 178-1
page 4 / INTRODUCTION
The Court should order Defendant Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) to supplement its document production to include responsive documents from five current and former CISA officials—Chad Josiah, Rob Schaul, Alex Zaheer, John Stafford, and Pierce Lowary. It emerged during Brian Scully’s deposition last Thursday, January 12, that these five officials are or have directly engaged in routing reports of so-called “disinformation” from government officials to social-media platforms for censorship—or “switchboarding,” as CISA calls it. Plaintiffs’ discovery requests clearly and explicitly requested these very communications, yet CISA failed to search the ESI of these five officials or produce any responsive documents from them. On the contrary, CISA’s interrogatory responses implied that it had made a good-faith determination that these officials are not among those “having relevant information —when, in fact, the opposite is true. The Court should order CISA remedy this deficiency and supplement its production by providing responsive documents from these five CISA officials without delay.
page 5 FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On May 5, 2022, Plaintiffs filed their original Complaint in this matter. Doc. 1. The Complaint named, among other Defendants, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) and its Director, Jen Easterly. Doc. 1, ¶¶ 25-26. The Complaint alleged in detail that CISA is violating the First Amendment by pressuring and coordinating with social-media platforms to censor Americans’ speech on election-related topics. Doc. 1, ¶¶ 210-221. As relevant here, the Complaint alleged that “CISA appears to be the focus of many of DHS’s attempts to police the content of speech and viewpoints on social media,” id. ¶ 214. The Complaint emphasized that CISA published a bulletin on April 12, 2022, “announcing that it was coordinating directly with social-media platforms to police ‘Mis, Dis, Malinformation,’ (which it calls ‘MDM’).” Id. ¶ 219. The Complaint quoted the bulletin’s statement that “[CISA’s] MDM team serves as a switchboard for routing disinformation concerns to appropriate social media platforms.” Id. ¶ 220 (emphasis added).
Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, filed on June 15, 2022, emphasized the same point—that CISA admits that it serves as a “switchboard” to steer demands for censorship to social-media platforms: “CISA’s ‘Mis, Dis, Malinformation’ bulletin openly boasts that CISA works directly with social-media companies to flag content for censorship: ‘The MDM team serves as a switchboard for routing disinformation concerns to appropriate social media platforms....’” Doc. 15, at 29 (emphasis in Doc. 15). Thus, this allegation—that CISA “serves a switchboard” for “routing disinformation concerns to appropriate social media platforms,” id.—was and is a central allegation about CISA’s activities in the Complaint and motion for preliminary injunction.
page 9
Plaintiffs deposed Brian Scully last Thursday, January 12, 2023. See Ex. 6 (Transcript of Deposition of Brian Scully). In his deposition, it emerged that Scully is not the only “switchboarder” for CISA. In fact, he was only one of six CISA officials who “switchboard” disinformation reports to social-media platforms. The other five include the four CISA officials who Defendants’ interrogatory responses had stated were not included as custodians “having relevant information”—i.e., Chad Josiah, Robert Schaul, Alex Zaheer, and John Stafford. Ex. 4, at 18. Moreover, Scully attempted to avoid identifying the fifth—Pierce Lowary—by repeatedly refusing to answer questions about Lowary’s identity.
In his deposition testimony, Scully described CISA’s practice of “rout[ing] disinformation concerns to social-media platforms” as a “switchboarding function.” Scully Dep. 193:6; see also id. at 241:4-242:11. Scully testified that “the MDM team took shifts” in covering the “switchboarding” emails to social-media platforms. Scully Dep. 166:9. In addition to Scully, those taking “shifts” included Chad Josiah, Rob Schaul, Alex Zaheer, and “an intern, which I’m not going to name”—later identified as Pierce Lowary. Scully Dep. 166:16-20. John Stafford also took such “shifts” in routing disinformation concerns to social-media platforms. Scully Dep. 167:17-20.
The interns who were involved in “switchboarding” on behalf of CISA—Alex Zaheer (then an intern, later a full-time CISA official) and Pierce Lowary—were, at that time, simultaneously working for both CISA and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which led the Election Integrity Partnership in pressuring social-media platforms for censorship of election speech. Scully Dep. 169:6-171:18. There were at least 200 emails from CISA to social-media platforms “routing disinformation concerns to the social-media platforms in 2020,” only some of which were produced to Plaintiffs in discovery. Scully Dep. 189:21-190:7. Scully repeatedly refused to disclose the name of the other intern (besides Alex Zaheer) who engaged in “switchboarding” for CISA. Scully Dep. 172:15-21.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.178.1.pdf
Full Docket / (reverse chronological filing order - latest first)
State of Missouri, State of Louisiana, et al., vs Joseph R. Biden Jr.
15 December 2022
President Donald J. Trump Free Speech Policy Initiative (relative excerpt)
"Fourth, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so called mis- and disinformation. The federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project. If any U.S. university is discovered to have been engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal or blacklisting, those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years and maybe more."
Full Speech / Video
https://youtu.be/_tC6qy8snO0?t=1 (6 min, 48 sec)
See comment thread this post for full transcript
https://greatawakening.win/p/16ZqKmr9uf/victory-or-death--general-george/
Can't wait for this song to be adapted with new lyrics...
Swictchboardin USA
https://youtu.be/2s4slliAtQU (3 min, 40 sec)
TL:DR --
From the Court document:
From Trump's Dec 15 2022 speech:
Thank you for all the sauce on this one, CHAOS_ACTUAL.