“Throughout this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a statement on Monday.

“This egregious attack on our First Amendment will be met with an equally full-hearted defense of the rights of the American people,” the AG added.

While the 164-page lawsuit was filed late last week it was updated on Monday. The new filing shows that Republican officials are targeting 47 more government departments, agencies and officials, in addition to the 20 defendants originally listed.

Those listed in the suit included President Joe Biden, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Nina Jankowicz, who was initially slated to head Biden’s now-disbanded Disinformation Governance Board. Added to the list of defendants are top White House officials Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty and White House Counsel Dana Remus, FBI Section Chief for the Foreign Influence Task Force Laura Dehmlow, CDC Deputy Communications Director Kate Galatas, and other top-ranking officials.

“Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit, seeking to expose that the federal government has worked hand-in-hand with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on their platforms. Our lawsuit has done exactly that – we’ve found a staggering ‘censorship enterprise’ that extends to a multitude of federal agencies and implicates government officials at the highest levels of government, but we’re not done yet,” added Attorney General Schmitt. “Now, we’ve added 47 additional defendants to our lawsuit, including several FBI agents and more top-ranking White House officials. We’re also asking the Court to allow our offices to take depositions to question these officials under oath. We’re only just getting started.”

Louisiana and Missouri plan to file a motion asking the Court to grant deposition requests and allow Missouri and Louisiana to question, under oath, certain defendants that are named in the lawsuit.

“Such communications from the White House impose maximal pressure on social-media companies, which clearly yields the sought-after results,” the petition argues. “And federal officials are fully aware that such pressure is necessary to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship of views that diverge from the government’s. CISA Director Jen Easterly, for example, texted with Matthew Masterson about ‘trying to get us in a place where Fed can work with platforms to better understand the mis/dis trends so relevant agencies can try to prebunk/debunk as useful,’ and complained about the Government’s need to overcome the social-media platforms’ ‘hesitation’ to working with the government: ‘Platforms have got to get more comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain.’” Read more