“Inside With Jen Psaki” at the NBC News bureau in Washington, D.C.((Credit: William B. Plowman / MSNBC)
Missouri v. Biden was filed on May 5, 2022. Since it was initially filed, it has taken quite a trip through the court system. The complaint has been amended 3 times, with the most recent Amendment being to transform the case into a class suit – due to the overwhelming evidence of broad harm to the constitutional rights of all Americans. You can view the docket by using this link. Part I:
It alleged that topics surrounding COVID-19, the origins of COVID, the Great Barrington Declaration, election integrity concerns, the COVID shot, the Hunter Biden laptop story (and more) were under scrutiny by the White House and other government agencies – and that the government had very publicly threatened to take action against social media companies should they not act to censor viewpoints on those topics that were disfavored by the government.
The Plaintiffs in the case (the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with several other private plaintiffs) moved for expedited discovery to be able to obtain a limited set of evidence as well as depositions of certain officials. They argued that this evidence would allow them to make the case for a temporary injunction to stop the government from infringing on the first amendment rights of Plaintiffs and their citizens.
Mueller special counsel team members Jeannie Rhee (l) with Andrew Weissmann (r) and Rush Atkinson(c). (Credit: Tom Brenner/The New York Times).
Unlike what many have come to expect, the judge GRANTED the motion for expedited discovery and depositions. A struggle ensued between the Government and the Plaintiffs, with the government fighting against the judge in this case (Judge Terry Doughty) to stop discovery and certain plaintiffs from being deposed. They took those complaints to the 5th Circuit of Appeals and a court in Virginia – a court that *usually* is friendly to the government.
At the appellate court level, the government argued that NO ONE should have to leave their government jobs to sit for lengthy depositions in this case, but certainly not the HEAD of CISA, for example.
The appellate court wouldn’t play ball with the government and remanded the case back to Louisiana with some guidance on how the judge should proceed. If memory serves me right, this happened three times.
One particularly interesting exchange came with the deposition of former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. She made threats to social media companies from the podium. They sought to depose her about those threats. She left the office. The government said they had no responsive documents to explain her comments. So Missouri and Louisiana said, “Then we have to depose Jen Psaki.”
The court agreed and ruled that now private citizen Psaki needed to testify. The government and Psaki- represented by Rhee – went to a court in Virginia to try to get THAT judge to stop the deposition.
The judge, in that case, laid into both the government and Psaki. It was so stunning I literally read the transcript of the hearing as its own video.
This went back to Louisiana after the Virginia judge said, “You won’t like how I rule on this, and your argument is terrible, so I’m sending it back to the judge who SHOULD be making this decision. The judge in Louisiana again decided Psaki should be deposed IF the government didn’t have any responsive docs from the press office. Somehow, those docs must’ve appeared.
All along the way, the government has lost- over and over again. They were also caught hiding discovery materials – the judge rapped them and ordered them to produce or else – which they did. (Read more: UncoverDC, 5/24/2023) (Archive)