What they're not telling you: # US Government Admits First Amendment Violation in Twitter Censorship Settlement The U.S. government has officially acknowledged violating the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms to suppress speech, according to a settlement agreement with former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson dated May 11 and obtained by The Epoch Times. This admission represents a rare governmental concession of unconstitutional conduct—one that mainstream outlets have largely treated as a procedural footnote rather than a landmark acknowledgment of state-coordinated censorship.
# THE TAKE: When Settlement Means Admission The Biden administration just paid off a censorship lawsuit—which is precisely what settlements do when the underlying facts are radioactive. Let's be clear: government + social media platform + removed content = prior restraint, full stop. The mechanics don't matter. Whether officials "requested" or "pressured," whether Twitter complied eagerly or reluctantly, the constitutional violation remains identical. What makes this settlement newsworthy isn't the payout. It's that the administration chose *silence over discovery*. No depositions. No document dumps revealing the actual chain of command. No public reckoning with how state power flowed through Silicon Valley's veins. The corporate-state fusion that Stoller warned about just bought confidentiality. And we'll never know the full architecture of control. That's not justice. That's witness intimidation with a check attached.
What the Documents Show
Berenson was removed from Twitter in 2021 after publishing posts critical of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, specifically stating that vaccines don't stop infection or transmission. The Trump administration's settlement with Berenson includes a $150,000 payment in exchange for dismissing the case originally filed in 2023 against then-President Joe Biden, Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb, and others. The settlement document explicitly states that government officials "did in fact violate the First Amendment by exerting substantial coercive pressure on social media companies such as Twitter to suppress disfavored speech." This language is unambiguous—not an interpretation or settlement without admission of wrongdoing, but a direct acknowledgment of constitutional violation. What the mainstream narrative obscures is that this wasn't an isolated incident.
Follow the Money
Emails disclosed in related litigation revealed that Biden administration officials and Gottlieb—a former FDA commissioner—directly communicated with Twitter executives about removing or suppressing content they deemed problematic. The pressure was neither subtle nor limited to one platform. The Trump administration separately settled with multiple states who had raised similar allegations, with the government agreeing not to "threaten Social-Media Companies with some form of punishment (i.e., an adverse legal, regulatory, or economic government sanction) unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech." This settlement establishes a pattern of government leverage over corporate speech decisions—the definition of state censorship through proxy. Notably, Twitter itself acknowledged wrongdoing in a separate settlement with Berenson, admitting it should not have banned the journalist. This creates a clarifying chain: government pressured Twitter; Twitter complied; Twitter later admitted the ban was unjustified; government now admits the pressure was unconstitutional. The mainstream press, which largely accepted official narratives about vaccine information during the pandemic, has given minimal coverage to these admissions.
What Else We Know
For ordinary Americans, this settlement establishes crucial precedent. If the government can pressure platforms to suppress vaccine-critical speech during COVID, the infrastructure exists to suppress any "disfavored speech" deemed inconvenient by future administrations. The constitutional guardrails against state censorship prove meaningless if enforcement mechanisms are outsourced to private corporations under government duress. What began as a single reporter's silencing has now become documented evidence that elected officials weaponized regulatory and economic leverage against protected speech—and paid to settle rather than risk full litigation exposure.
Primary Sources
- Source: ZeroHedge
- Category: Corporate Watchdog
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
Disclosure: NewsAnarchist aggregates from public records, API feeds (Federal Register, CourtListener, MuckRock, Hacker News), and independent media. AI-assisted synthesis. Always verify primary sources linked above.