Senator Eric Schmitt: Exposing the Biggest Censorship Scandal in US History

How a Missouri Lawsuit Pulled Back the Curtain on Government-Tech Collusion

Senator Eric Schmitt walks through a high-stakes legal and political story that reads like a courtroom thriller: Missouri v. Biden, the discovery process that produced tens of thousands of internal documents, and the revelations that followed in the Twitter files. Across the conversation, Schmitt, alongside two hosts, traces how public-health rules, election messaging and intelligence-community interactions created an ecosystem in which government agencies and private platforms coordinated content moderation in unprecedented ways.

The discovery strategy that changed the narrative

Rather than rushing for an injunction, Missouri’s team sought discovery first — a tactical choice that forced the Biden administration to produce emails, texts and portal logs. Those records revealed special channels between agencies like the FBI, CISA and the CDC and large social platforms, along with internal tools that throttled content. The deposits and sworn testimony included high-profile figures and directly informed later public disclosures.

Platforms, Section 230, and algorithmic editorial choices

The conversation unpacks the tension inside Section 230 protections: platforms were designed as neutral conduits, yet internal moderation choices and algorithms functionally acted like editorial judgment. Schmitt argues that when platforms make targeted censorship decisions or alter terms of service under governmental pressure, they cross into publisher behavior and should not retain blanket legal subsidies.

Hunter Biden laptop, Russiagate, and the intelligence apparatus

The hosts probe the Hunter Biden laptop episode as a focal point: why the FBI and trust-and-safety teams at multiple platforms treated the story as Russian disinformation, and how that framing shaped censorship decisions ten days before an election. The discussion expands to Hamilton 68, the Steele dossier, and claims about intelligence laundering and institutional accountability.

Foreign policy realities and negotiating with adversaries

The episode then pivots to geopolitics: Schmitt articulates a realist posture on Ukraine, arguing that endless military subsidies without a clear plan are unsustainable and that diplomacy requires talking to adversaries. He frames current Western policy as a mismatch between rhetorical urgency and the actual economic, industrial, and political will to sustain a prolonged conflict.

What this means going forward

• The book The Last Line of Defense offers an inside account of the litigation, depositions and policy wonk moments that exposed this coordination.
• Exposing documentary evidence shifted the public debate from conspiracy theory to adjudicated fact patterns.
• The debate over algorithms, platform liability and the limits of government influence was reframed as a constitutional issue about the First Amendment.

Across legal, technological and geopolitical lines, this conversation focuses on institutional accountability: documented coordination between agencies and platforms, potential legal avenues for redress, and the policy trade-offs of platform regulation. The dialogue emphasizes that the balance between public safety and free expression requires careful rules, clear distinctions between informing and coercing private actors, and transparent processes that restore public trust. The episode closes by distilling these themes into a broader claim: when government actors and private intermediaries operate without clear, content-neutral boundaries, democratic norms and open debate risk permanent distortion.