Twitter staff said the White House pushed for the ban during a private meeting.
Newly released internal messages between Twitter staff show them discussing an April 2021 meeting with the White House where the Biden administration reportedly pushed for journalist and author Alex Berenson to be booted from the platform before Twitter banned him.
Berenson was banned from Twitter for violating its “COVID-19 misinformation” rules four months later in August 2021. Berenson responded by suing Twitter in December 2021, with the lawsuit accusing the tech giant of acting “on behalf of the federal government in censoring and barring him from access to its platform.” Berenson’s account was subsequently reinstated in July 2022 after both parties settled the censorship lawsuit.
These internal messages were published by Berenson and show April 22, 2021 discussions between Twitter employees on the business messaging app Slack. Berenson said he obtained the messages as part of his lawsuit against Twitter.
In one of the Slack messages, a Twitter employee says their meeting with the “WH [White House]” was “pretty good” but “they had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform.”
In another Slack message, a Twitter employee says that the White House “really wanted to know about Alex Berenson” and that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor to President Biden’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator, “suggested they had seen data viz that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Berenson said that in another Slack message, a Twitter employee said: “I’ve taken a pretty close look at his account and I don’t think any of it’s violative.”
Berenson noted that the message about White House officials questioning why he hadn’t been banned from the platform “make clear that top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.”
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