Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube: Read It For Yourself
The former president is heading to court, as Donald Trump sues Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube while asking for restoration of his accounts and overturn Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Former President Trump is suing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for banning his accounts, arguing in remarks on Wednesday that they have violated his First Amendment right to free speech in “illegal, unconstitutional censorship.”
Mr. Trump was barred from Twitter and Facebook after a mob of his supporters overran the Capitol in a deadly attack on January 6, with the companies citing concerns that he would encourage more violence.
“We’re demanding an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday. “I am confident that we will achieve a historic victory for American freedom and at the same time freedom of speech.”
In complaints filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Trump asked the court to overturn Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media companies from liability for content posted on their platforms, and restore his accounts on Twitter and Facebook, as well as his channel on YouTube. He’s also asking the court to prevent Twitter, Facebook and YouTube from “exercising censorship, editorial control or prior restraint in its many forms” over the posts and uploads of the presidents.
Twitter and Facebook both declined to comment.
Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California who has studied 60 similar, failed lawsuits that sought to take on internet companies for terminating or suspending users’ accounts, told The Associated Press that Mr. Trump’s lawsuit is likely to fail.
“They’ve argued everything under the sun, including First Amendment, and they get nowhere,” Goldman said. “Maybe he’s got a trick up his sleeve that will give him a leg up on the dozens of lawsuits before him. I doubt it.”
Mr. Trump is being represented by John Q. Kelly and John P. Coale, who are directing a team of 20 attorneys, according to Coale. Coale said his legal team includes attorneys he worked with in Louisiana when negotiated for smokers in the tobacco trials of the 1990s.
The legal effort is being funded the American First Policy Institute, a think tank and 501(c)(3) non-profit created earlier this year by former Trump administration officials and headed up by Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon.
Coale told CBS News he anticipates “thousands and thousands” will join the former president in his class-action lawsuit. “It’s basically anybody who was harmed or censored in one way or another by these companies, whether it’s editorializing what they tweet or what they put on Facebook. The reason that Donald Trump is the main class rep is because he got it worse than anybody.” Lawyers plan to have “subclasses” for a range of individuals stripped of social media privileges.
As spelled out in the complaint, Coale alleges that removals by Twitter, Facebook and YouTube amount to censorship and violate a First Amendment right to free speech, despite protections under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934.
Coale said there will be “a lot of high profile people … coming out of the woodwork” in the coming days. There were a number of Trump associates and backers kicked off the platform, including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.
“I think it’s going to be thousands and thousands of people. So that’s why we’re hearing today from lots and lots of people. I think it’ll be a pretty good class size actually, when it’s all said and done.”
The former president’s legal team plans to file a motion for preliminary injunction early next week – likely Monday or Tuesday – in an attempt to prohibit an injuction from the social media companies currently banning the former president and others from their platforms.
Coale said he first talked to the former president over the phone about three months ago, and Mr. Trump agreed with Coale that they would keep the lawsuit under wraps until Wednesday’s announcement.
The Facebook Oversight Board upheld the initial suspension of Mr. Trump’s account in May, and the company announced in June that it would ban the former president from its platform for at least two years.
Mr. Trump’s accounts were banned after Twitter and Facebook found that his posts encouraged the attack on the Capitol. In a video posted to Facebook on January 6, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the presidential election had been stolen from him as rioters overran the building seeking to overturn the election results.
He later posted to both Twitter and Facebook that “these are the things that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.”
Within minutes, Facebook also took down the post from Mr. Trump’s account and initially blocked him from posting for 24 hours before suspending him indefinitely.
Read Trump sues Facebook for yourself here:
Trump Sues Facebook
Trump Sues Twitter:
Trump Sues Twitter
Trump Sues YouTube:
Trump Sues YouTube
Much like his 60 dismissed election lawsuits this is all about the grift. One hopes the dismissal is quick.Report
Grift? That’s malarkey.
(When you let a storyteller and game-designer run your legal defense program… it gets interesting.)Report
*Gets out the popcorn*Report
This seems not even up to the typical quality of trump lawsuits. Which is saying something but i bet it will buy someone a new gold toilet.Report
The gold toilet is the BORING part of that art exhibit.
The “favorite toiletpaper dispenser” right beside it — from a truck stop, that Trump has fond memories of (and will talk about if you ask) — that’s the bit that’s fun.
Trump is a fun sort of guy. (Remember that red button for Coke thing he did in the Oval Office?)Report
The lawyers involved are….
Let’s just say it’s like going in for leukemia , and finding out your crack medical team is two dentists, a psychologist, a pair of dermatologists, and an oncologist hyper-specialized in prostate cancer.
They’re all doctors, after all.
The primary attorney — Matthew Lee Baldwin represents a from a firm specializing in real estate (water damage, property insurance, commercial litigation, and oddly criminal defense).
I know it says “commercial litigation” in there which seems relevant, except for two things: One, this is hilariously a first amendment case despite being targeted at non-government entities, and two — a glance at his firm shows their “commercial litigation” is, in fact, commercial real estate litigation.
This is absolutely a grift to pour a few more tens of millions into Trump’s pockets, from the same idiots they conned in “stop the steal”.
The lawsuit itself is, of course, hilariously bad. It was clearly not run past a 5 year old to determine validity.Report
More like, going in for leukemia and finding out your crack team is Dr. Hook, Dr. Johnny Fever, and Doc Ock.Report
We should start a pool. How long until it’s officially announced that Trump’s lawyers won’t get paid?Report
Sooner than you’ll hear about HCQ’s effectivity as run in province-wide population studies in India.
(Can’t have any competition with Emergency Authorized Money Pits)
(Yes, this is relevant. When bigtech is busy suppressing news, I’m gonna mention it.)Report
If you’re going to mention it, you might want to say just what it is you’re mentioning.Report
Too lazy to google?
https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/remember-donald-trump-touted-hydroxychloroquine-study-india-backs-as-covid-19-cure-1811892-2021-06-07
Source is citing Fauci on the anti-viral properties of HCQ, from back in 1985.Report
Why should I? You brought it up. You thought it was important enough to mention. If you don’t care to explain what you’re talking about, how does that oblige me to do homework? It’s not as if your saying it makes it worth my — or anyone else’s — while to try to figure out what you’re talking about.Report
Though he never took HCQ, so this is irrelevant.Report
Though he never took HCQ, so this is irrelevant.
But did have access to drugs (remdesivir and Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail) a regular person still can’t get and an entire medical team at his continuous disposal in case of complications from that drug regimen.Report
Well, not getting paid isn’t always bad.
I mean bad for Rudy, but Rudy has clearly been day drinking for a decade and so was not on the ball.
Powell, for instance, raised several million for her Kraken lawsuits AND got herself into the right-wing grift circuit (if, sadly, the Q-anon version). For what was perhaps 30 hours of her work, tops, as she collated crowd-sourced stuff and filed under her name.
She’s out, worst case, a week of billable hours and perhaps 50 to 100k if she’s forced to pay legal fees and maybe sanctioned.
Why would she care? She made ten years of income in three months AND landed an easier and more lucrative job conning Q-anon for their cash.
She made retirement money on this.Report
Yeah. I don’t have any sense of whether Rudy made serious grift money or not.Report
I think Rudy clearly thought he’d get a cut of Trump’s “legal defense” money (“stop the steal” raised hundreds of millions, of which one can assume Trump got the lion’s share).
Which, of course, he did not. Trump used a charity to pay for his kid’s scouting dues. He wouldn’t pay Rudy a penny, even if Rudy had won.
Since Rudy lost, and Trump thought he looked bad doing it, of course Rudy wasn’t getting anything.
FWIW, apparently Trump is aware he has terrible, terrible lawyers and has taken to just asking random people at his clubs for recommendations.
Barry Zuckerkorn was not, apparently, available.Report
I remember when the internet used to be fun.
Closing down speech from people who have alternate viewpoints (even dumb ones) …
Remember when liberals thought that was a BAD thing?Report
I think we conflate the power of a handful of tech companies with free speech at our peril. Compelled speech also has first amendment implications. We can address the first without getting into the thornier issues of the second.Report
Compelled speech is exactly what liberals cheer for.
If it’s artists that are being compelled, at least.
I, for one, find being compelled to make art that I do not believe in, offensive.
(see: custom creation of a cake for someone’s religious veiling ceremony).Report
I’m uninterested in the hypocrisy.
Not that it doesn’t exist, but that it’s besides the point. The issue in question is compelling private businesses to publicize speech they don’t want to.
Now obviously every partisan in the world wants to muzzle speech they don’t like and would love nothing more than to be able to make people say things they do like. The way to deal with that is to protect the marketplace, not pick a side.Report
Second paragraph first… In an industry based on network effects, the value provided to the individual users increases as the square of the number of users in the network. This means a whole raft of problems trying to maintain a market with a significant number of service providers. Eg, Google has effectively infinite money to throw at projects to compete with Facebook. It’s not enough; all of them have failed because of the network effects. I know people — and am sure most of us do — who have sworn off Facebook for some other platform, then come back because their “network” didn’t follow them.
The interesting thing related to your first paragraph is Section 230. None of Facebook or Twitter or (probably) YouTube would last the year if Section 230 were repealed and those companies had to accept liability for the things their users say. There’s at least an argument that they should either take on their own liability problems, or they should depend on government protection from liability, but that they can’t have it both ways: block content they don’t like even though it poses no liability threat.Report
I see it differently, especially with regard to 230. Eliminating it is not freeing the market for user generated content, it’s killing it.
Your comment gets at the real issue though, which IMO isn’t speech policing, it’s that a small number of companies may have become too powerful.Report
I’m torn between a guild loyalty to the idea that lawyers should get paid, astonishment that some new crop of layers is willing to take on the open and notorious risk of not getting paid, and a strong sense that anyone willing to bring these lawsuits deserves to get screwed.Report
I have no sympathies or guild loyalty on this matter whatsoever. If they get screwed, which they very likely will, then it’s on them.Report
Can us non-lawyers still laugh at them for getting screwed, or is that against guild rules?
Maybe they were smart and got paid up front?Report
The biggest misperception of non-lawyers is that there are no stupid lawyers. Au contraire…Report
So we can laugh at them.
Most excellent…Report
… you delivered a gravy boat to the court?
A gravy boat filled with gravy?Report
I’ve got to admit — me at 18 thought becoming a lawyer was clearly much, much harder than it apparently is.
On the other hand, becoming a GOOD lawyer is probably about as difficult as I thought, and when looking at careers I kinda wanted to be good at what I did.Report
By all means laugh at them. Guild rules are for guild members only.
I would guess that they weren’t smart and didn’t get paid up front, at least not more than a modest retainer.Report
Trump is the Lionel Hutz of clients.
Prompt Payment?
No, Risk Of Default!Report
The lawyers seem to be no names and some have aol addresses. One guy appears to be 75 years old. In short, these are Trumpist true believers beclowing themselves at the altar of their McDoanlds Moloch.Report
LMFAO!
Good thing you spelled that wrong, or the Golden Arches Supper Club might sue for defamation of brand.Report