Some commentary about a thing from Tom Woods.

One more blow has been struck against the bad guys.

'I haven't always agreed with Alex Berenson. Among other things, he can be contemptuous of his own followers if they disagree with him on Covid treatments. I get that he is far from perfect. But I'll take him over Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci, Andy Slavitt, and Scott Gottlieb, that's for sure.

Well, it so happens that Berenson has filed suit against Biden, Slavitt (Covid adviser), Gottlieb (former FDA commissioner and current Pfizer board member), and several other important figures in the so-called "Covid response" for conspiring to get him removed from Twitter, where he had by far his largest reach.

I'm glad he's doing it, if for no other reason that the case becomes part of the permanent record of this period, and can serve as a source for however many honest historians in the future want to tell the true story of our times.

Berenson's suit runs 70 pages, so I read it for you.
Among other things, the case alleges

a nearly unprecedented conspiracy to suppress Mr. Berenson’s First Amendment rights. Through 2021, they—and a senior board member at Pfizer, Inc. which has made more than $70 billion selling COVID-19 vaccines—worked together to pressure Twitter to suspend Mr. Berenson’s account and mute his voice as a leading COVID-19 vaccine skeptic. The White House and the Biden Administration did this at the same time government officials promoted their views on the necessity of COVID19 vaccination on Twitter, effectively blocking Mr. Berenson from commenting on their own statements or making his own.

In August 2021, after months of public and secret pressure, Defendants succeeded. Twitter banned Mr. Berenson. The censorship 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.
These allegations may sound extraordinary, but the conspirators’ own words, documents from Twitter and the government, and discovery from federal officials in a lawsuit filed by the States of Missouri and Louisiana, detail their efforts....

Only days after President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, federal officials began to press Twitter to remove posts that raised questions about the safety of the mRNA shots. But their specific animus against Mr. Berenson went further. In a secret White House meeting in April 2021, the conspirators—led by Andrew Slavitt, Senior Advisor to the White House’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator—specifically targeted Mr. Berenson for removal. The conspirators did not simply ask Twitter to remove a specific post Mr. Berenson made. Rather they pushed Twitter to ban him entirely, an unconstitutional prior restraint on his speech....

Throughout the period in which the conspirators demanded his removal, Mr. Berenson provided links to articles in reputable scientific journals and commentary on them. He was among the first American journalists to note the potential link between the mRNA shots and myocarditis, a connection health authorities have now acknowledged.
The text goes on to chronicle how many times Twitter had been urged to crack down on Berenson, and how many times Twitter (even in its pre-Elon Musk days) responded that he hadn't violated their terms or service or specifically their Covid misinformation policy, since he was linking to reputable sources that backed up his claims.

So while it's surely true that Big Tech was up to no good over the past few years, it's clear from the record, recounted in painstaking detail in the suit, that pressure from the federal government and people close to it was the deciding factor in getting Berenson removed.

In August 2021 Berenson wrote about the shots' loss of effectiveness. Gottlieb, in turn, complained to Todd O'Boyle, a Twitter lobbyist in Washington. O'Boyle was the same executive whom White House officials had spoken to about the troublesome Mr. Berenson.
With the vaccine mandates announced, the suit says,"Dr. Gottlieb and Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla had financial incentives to silence Mr. Berenson. The Biden Administration had even larger political incentives. Government officials painted vaccination against COVID-19 as a life-and-death issue. To them, Mr. Berenson’s constitutional and legal rights to petition the government, speak freely, and report were mere inconveniences."'

Gottlieb became especially angry about a Tweet in which Berenson wrote:

"It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity."

A few hours after Gottlieb's complaint to Twitter about this Tweet, Berenson's account was removed.
As you may know, Berenson would later sue Twitter itself, forcing the company to admit that his "tweets should not have led to his suspension." "But," his current suit points out, "the damage has already been done -- to Mr. Berenson and millions of Americans who shared his concerns about the vaccines."

The federal government was also threatening to remove Section 230 protection, which granted Twitter immunity from content its users posted. With that provision gone, Twitter's business model would be impossible.

So he's suing the SOBs. I'll keep you posted.'