Government

COVID Truther Alex Berenson Fundraises For LOLsuit Against Twitter For Defamatory Deplatforming

Knock yourself out, buddy, the filing fee is $402.

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It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be done IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity. — Alex Berenson

That’s the tweet that finally got COVID truther Alex Berenson banned from Twitter over the weekend, after more than a year of spreading misinformation about coronavirus, masks, and vaccines.

But don’t worry, you guys, he’s having the time of his life over on Telegram, laughing it up with his friends, who are all just out of frame.

The investigative reporter turned spy novelist has no background in epidemiology, immunology, or even statistics. But his boundless confidence in his own abilities and willingness to say literally any contrarian shit to criticize the medical establishment has turned him into a darling of the right, with multiple appearances on Fox every week.

And in addition to being a certified amateur epidemiologist, Berenson is also a First Amendment legal scholar, albeit of the autodidact variant. Truly, he doth contain multitudes.

Before his ban, Berenson was already threatening to sue.

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And now he’s trawling for cash over on Substack in preparation for a very serious lawsuit to be filed any day now.

“I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this,” he intoned ominously in a Saturday post captioned “Goodbye Cruel World.” Oh, sorry, that’s “Goodbye Twitter.” My mistake!

“They have defamed me and denied me a very important platform. But with your help I’ll do my best to keep getting the truth out,” he sniffled later that day.

He then tried to sneak back in using a sock puppet account, which was immediately banhammered by the platform. Because Twitter isn’t some kind of self-taught, learned-it-on-4chan tech overlord — those guys are the real deal.

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After a weekend moaning on the various outlets which will still have him, Berenson emerged in the eighth stage of grief: grift mode.

“I am still considering my legal options, including what lawyer or firm to hire. A potential suit is complex and would cover – at a minimum – First Amendment issues, contract law, and drug/vaccine law,” he wrote Tuesday, adding that “A lawsuit may be expensive, and I appreciate your offers of donations. Several very wealthy people have offered to help as well, and my strong preference is to rely on them if possible; I don’t think people with mortgages to pay should be subsidizing this fight, unless there is no choice.”

If you people are intent on showering him with cash, then he will reluctantly accept it. It would be rude to do otherwise, n’est-ce pas?

“Twitter has defamed me, Twitter said my information is inaccurate,” the aggrieved hobby infectious disease specialist complained to a sympathetic Tucker Carlson, “and, you know, as a result, everybody from Vice to other places, they have said terrible things and they say I’m disgraced or that I’m putting out false information.”

Which is bloody rich coming from a guy whose entire schtick is explaining how everyone else’s information is inaccurate and denouncing drug companies for pumping Americans full of so-called experimental drugs with dangerous side effects.

And not for nothing, but Derek Thompson’s amazing takedown of “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man” appeared in the Atlantic on April 1. It’s not like sentient adults needed Twitter to give them a heads up that this guy might not be a trustworthy source of medical advice.

But Tucker Carlson voiced nothing but support for Berenson’s litigation.

“I hope you sue the crap out of these totalitarians. I really do,” he said, even going so far as to offer to fund the litigation himself. KA-CHING!

“People want to be part of this. They want to help fund this lawsuit. It’s been amazing to me,” Berenson said, wide-eyed.

“I want to fund it,” Carlson agreed, “I do, I mean that.”

By which presumably he means, “I’d like to write a check to Twitter’s lawyers.” Because these lawsuits against Twitter are all ridiculous, not to mention being barred under the First Amendment, no matter how much research Alex Berenson does into trying to prove that Twitter is actually a shopping mall.

And because Twitter’s terms of service require claims against it to be heard in California, they’re adjudicated under that state’s vigorous anti-SLAPP law. Which is how Laura Loomer, the wingiest of the wingers, wound up on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees when she sued the company for tortious deplatforming in 2019.

Just yesterday that weird dude who “discovered” Hunter Biden’s laptop at his repair shop in Delaware got stuck with Twitter’s legal bill after he filed a junk defamation suit against the company.

But that guy probably didn’t have Alex Berenson’s crack legal research and analysis skills, honed by literal hours of combing the internet. This time will be totally different, you bet!

Tucker Offers to ‘Fund’ COVID Grifter Alex Berenson’s Twitter Lawsuit [Daily Beast]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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