A former White House press secretary has so far been unsuccessful in exiting litigation brought by Attorney General (and Senator-elect) Eric Schmitt.
Jen Psaki sought to quash Schmitt’s subpoena that forces her to comply with discovery in a lawsuit filed by Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
But U.S. Magistrate Ivan Davis for the Eastern District of Virginia transferred her motion to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana where the lawsuit was filed and where there is a standing order issued by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty allowing government officials like Psaki and Dr. Anthony Fauci to be deposed.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was deposed on Nov. 23. In the 400-page transcript, Fauci answered, ‘I don’t recall’ 174 times, according to media reports.
“Psaki made statements in an open press conference that gave rise to a belief that the federal government was signaling big tech to censor information regarding the pandemic,” said Curtis Hill, former Indiana Attorney General. “I would ask her which officials are flagging the big tech companies among other things.”
Schmitt and Landry accuse the Democratic Biden administration of colluding in silencing conservatives on social media sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Meta.
“She's in a bit of a dilemma because now she has to follow up on information that she's already given publicly,” Hill said of Psaki. “There's a possibility that she might say something, whether it's incriminating or just contradictory, that is proven to be untrue and would either be a problem for her or a problem for someone else in the Biden administration.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, the federal lawsuit is important to the average Missourian because of the possibility that social media companies have become government actors.
“It's very clear that the Attorneys General Landry and Schmitt are doing the right thing to go after that information and make that connection because the government is prohibited from quashing our free speech,” Hill told the St. Louis Record.
The full transcript of the deposition of FBI Agent Elvis Chan, taken on Nov. 29, was released this week.
“I encourage everyone to read this deposition transcript to see exactly how cozy the FBI was with major social media companies – it goes much deeper than we imagined,” Schmitt said in a statement online. “We will continue to fight to uncover more evidence and information and expose it for the world to see.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to rule on Psaki's appeal of Doughty's order requiring government officials to comply with Schmitt and Landry's depositions.