Month: June 2024

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a First Amendment challenge from a group of social media users and two states  to the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies in an effort to remove misinformation on the platforms about COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling issued Wednesday, said the individual and state plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to seek a preliminary injunction against federal executive-branch officials and agencies over their official communications with social-media companies about the spread of misinformation online. The court determined that the users and the states, Louisiana and Missouri, did not have the legal right to seek an injunction against the Biden administration over its contacts with the platforms. The users had argued that their speech was unconstitutionally stifled when their social media posts were removed or suppressed after prodding by administration officials.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the opinion for the majority: “The plaintiffs fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions and the defendants’ communications with the platforms .. The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics. This court’s standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of government.”

Per ABC News, the ruling means executive branch agencies involved in the case — the White House, Surgeon General, CDC, FBI and CISA, among others — can continue to interact with social media companies over moderation of content on their platforms.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement: “The Supreme Court’s decision is the right one, and it helps ensure the Biden Administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people, after years of extreme and unfounded Republican attacks on public officials who engaged in critical work to keep Americans safe.”

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Five people have been indicted for their alleged roles in the $120,000 bribery attempt of a juror in Minnesota during the Feeding Our Future fraud trial earlier this month. Federal prosecutors said that authorities found on confiscated devices a “chilling” plan to give a juror more than $120,000 and specific instructions on how to convince other jurors to vote to acquit.

The alleged bribery attempt was reported as the six-week trial in Minneapolis, which began on April 22, was wrapping up against seven people charged in connection with an alleged $250 million fraud scheme through the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future.  The defendants were among 70 people charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota in the massive fraud scheme.

During the trial, a juror was dismissed after reporting that a woman dropped a bag of cash at her home and offered her more money if she would vote to acquit seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic. The overall scheme is estimated to have diverted $250 million in federal funds in what officials call the “largest pandemic fraud in the United States.”

U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said that the unidentified juror was targeted because she was the youngest and a person of color, and called the bribery attempt a “chilling attack on our justice system,” and said it was fortunate that “juror 52 could not be bought.”

Luger said at a news conference that the five charged — Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Ladan Mohamed Ali — found the juror’s information online, including her home address. Three of the people charged were defendants in the federal fraud trial that ended in June, while the other two were recruited. One of them had been acquitted of all the crimes he had faced. The five people were charged Wednesday with multiple crimes related to bribing a juror. Abdiaziz Shafii Farah faces an additional charge of obstruction of justice for deleting his phone.

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, and Said Shafii Farah devised a “blueprint” instructing the juror to convince the rest of the panel to vote to acquit all of the defendants because prosecutors were racist. The instruction manual said, according to Luger: “We are immigrants. They don’t respect or care about us. You alone can end this case.” Luger said they had “studied the juror, followed her, and determined that she would succumb to their scheme…. and “thought carefully about what they wanted the juror to say to the rest of the jury, and their hopes were to inflame the jury.”

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