We don’t have to wait for a second Trump presidency to see how would-be authoritarians use the law to punish their enemies. It’s happening right now with Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters, combined with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s announcement that Texas is investigating the advocacy group for “fraud,” and Missouri’s attorney general’s promise to look into the same.
Both the lawsuit and criminal investigation scrutiny arise from the group having published research that showed Twitter (now known as “X”) ran ads next to antisemitic content. This added to the momentum pushing advertisers like IBM, Apple, Warner Bros., Discovery, and Sony away from the platform after Elon Musk post’s last week, in which he wrote, “you have said the actual truth” in response to an antisemitic post claiming that Jewish communities push “dialectical hatred against whites” and referencing “hordes of minorities.”
Musk’s lawsuit is reminiscent of Trump’s many retaliatory “nuisance” lawsuits brought to punish and silence negative information about him—like his bizarre claim that legendary journalist Bob Woodward somehow violated copyright law in publishing audio of interviews Trump gave for use in a book about Trump, or his many failures at trying to enforce non-disclosure agreements.
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The suit is not only meritless but poorly conceived, since it alleges that Media Matters somehow manipulated X/Twitter’s algorithms to produce the placement of ads next to antisemitic content, but not that the placement didn’t happen.
This theory not only subjects the tech competence of Musk and X/Twitter to ridicule but also will likely force them to disclose all sorts of information about their algorithms that they would want to keep secret.
CEO Linda Yaccarino’s statement that “Data wins over manipulation or allegations. Don’t be manipulated. Stand with X” basically screams that “the facts are against us but don’t believe facts, believe us.” This plea to “stand with X” echoes the exhortations of former President Trump to his followers about the need to deny the 2020 election results and the “fake news media”—and to only believe in him.
Like the Trump suits, Musk’s looks weak on substance and long on hot air. Substantively, one of the first weaknesses will be the decision to file in Texas to potentially avoid the Anti-SLAPP laws in states like California—where X/Twitter is headquartered—that are meant to sanction frivolous lawsuits with attorney fees.
More echoes of Trump and his extremist emulators are found in Musk’s tweet on Tuesday, in which he boasted, “There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies”—a not-so thinly veiled hint at violence and other forms of aggression (like finance-draining bogus lawsuits) against people he deems to be his adversaries.
But what makes the efforts to silence Media Matters really disturbing is the involvement of government officials, like the attorney generals for Texas and Missouri.
As laid out in a post by Judd Legum, publisher of the newsletter Popular Information, Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller suggested in a tweet that a fraud theory be used as a legal weapon against Media Matters. Musk quickly responded, “Interesting. Both civil and criminal…” This, in turn, prompted Missouri Attorney General Andew Bailey to reply: “My team is looking into this matter.” Not to be outdone, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton formally announced that he had opened a “fraud investigation” into Media Matters research.
It is in no way irrelevant that the attorneys who Musk hired to bring the civil lawsuit against Media Matters are former lawyers in Paxton’s office or the office of the Texas solicitor general. As one legal observer noted, “Talk about weaponization of government.”
This is Trump’s playbook—the thin-skinned, erratic billionaire using his proximity to power and financial dominance to bring critics to heel. We should see it for what it is and let his would-be accomplices in government know, at the ballot box, that we won’t tolerate the abuse of their offices in service of a would-be authoritarian.
