Gov’t involved in Election Integrity Partnership’s censorship campaign, lawsuit reveals.

Lawsuit Alleges Government Conspiracy to Violate First Amendment Rights of Social Media Users

A class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in a Louisiana federal court alleges that members of the Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project conspired with state, local, and federal government officials to violate the First Amendment rights of social media users. The lawsuit, filed by Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft and Co-Director of Health Freedom Louisiana Jill Hines, details extensive direct and indirect government involvement with the defendants’ censorship activities, allegedly making the private entities and individuals “state actors” for purposes of the Constitution.

The complaint, which spans 88 pages, highlights the government’s alleged connection to the defendants’ censorship activities. Here are the key points:

A Bit About the Defendants

The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was formed in 2020 and describes itself as a partnership “between four of the nation’s leading institutions focused on understanding misinformation and disinformation in the social media landscape.” The Virality Project was launched in early 2021 to address supposed Covid-19 “misinformation” on social media. Both EIP and the Virality Project pushed Big Tech companies to censor speech. The institutions involved in the EIP and Virality Project are private entities, and the individuals running those institutions are non-governmental actors. Thus, without more, the censorship efforts would not implicate the First Amendment.

The Alleged Conspiracy

However, the complaint alleges that there was more — much more — a conspiracy between the defendants. Those defendants include the Stanford Internet Observatory and the Leland Stanford Junior University and its board of trustees, the latter two of which are allegedly legally responsible for the observatory’s conduct; Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory; Renée DiResta, the Stanford Internet Observatory’s research manager; the Atlantic Council; the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab; and Graham Brookie, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab.

In support of the alleged conspiracy, the plaintiffs quoted at