Records in the lawsuit outline a briefing that summer with Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, both of whom criticized social media companies for allowing the spread of misinformation that was influencing people against vaccination.
“And we can’t wait longer for them to take aggressive action because it’s costing people their lives,” Dr. Murthy said on July 15, 2021.
Mr. Biden expressed outrage the following day, telling reporters that social media companies that hosted vaccine misinformation were “killing people.”
In legal filings, Mr. Kennedy said that he had been named one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by a prominent advocacy group — and that he was one of the people the White House was targeting. Exhibits in the lawsuit show that White House officials leaned on social media companies to take down misinformation.
-Within a month, a senior Facebook executive reported to Dr. Murthy that it had removed a number of pages or groups, including Mr. Kennedy’s, court records show.
The Supreme Court dismissed an associated case last summer, and an appeals court dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s case late last year. Lawyers representing Mr. Kennedy and others are still working on obtaining depositions of about 30 people, mostly Biden administration officials.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.
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