Alex Berenson Sues Biden, Pfizer Board Member Over Twitter Ban
Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson on April 12 sued President Joe Biden and a Pfizer board member over the pressure placed on Twitter to ban him.
Berenson, now an independent journalist, was suspended from Twitter in 2021 after top Biden administration officials and Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), urged the social media company to take action against him.
Twitter initially resisted the pressure but ultimately banned Berenson from the platform.
Berenson later settled a suit with Twitter, which acknowledged it should not have banned him.
Now he’s targeting the officials who pressured Twitter, including Gottlieb and Dr. Andrew Slavitt, a one-time White House COVID-19 official.
Slavitt and other White House officials questioned during one meeting why Berenson “hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” a Twitter employee said in an internal message. Rob Flaherty, one of the officials, recently recalled Slavitt “expressing his view that Twitter was not enforcing its content guidelines with respect to Alex Berenson’s tweets, and that employees from Twitter disagreed with that view.” Slavitt, who has called Berenson a conspiracy theorist, was updated by Twitter about Berenson’s suspensions, emails released by Berenson in the suit show.
Gottlieb, meanwhile, tried to get Twitter to censor multiple people, including Dr. Brett Giroir, a former acting FDA commissioner, and Berenson.
Their actions violated Berenson’s First Amendment rights, according to the new lawsuit, filed in U.S. court in New York.
“The government Defendants specifically targeted Mr. Berenson’s constitutionally protected speech and journalism,” it states.
The violations “may and are likely to recur unless the government Defendants are enjoined,” it added.
The suit asks the court to block the government from targeting Berenson and award him damages.
The defendants are Biden, Flaherty, Slavitt, Gottlieb, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
The White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, Pfizer, and Gottlieb did not respond to requests for comment. Slavitt could not be reached.
COVID-19 Vaccine Critic
Berenson has been a prominent critic of the COVID-19 vaccines, pointing out that they’ve failed to stop infection or transmission.
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission,” he wrote in one post, adding, “And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”
Berenson has often provided links to studies or other datasets in his posts.
Twitter claimed that Berenson violated its policies multiple times, resulting in a ban, or permanent suspension.
The ban “harmed both Mr. Berenson and a clearly identifiable class of nearly 100 million Americans whose interests he helped represent—Americans who either had questions about the vaccine or did not want to be forced to take a shot that they feared had been rushed through development and lost its ability to prevent COVID-19 infections within months,” the new suit states.
Berenson sued Twitter in federal court in California, alleging the company breached its contract with him as a user. The suit led to a settlement and Twitter’s admission that Berenson should not have been banned.
