Musk's Lapdog AGs Fail To Convict Media Matters For Crimes Against Twitter

Should you brag on air about your crafty plan to prosecute people for being mean to Elon? It's a mystery!

On Friday, Judge Amit Mehta read Missouri Attorney General Andy Bailey for filth. Turns out courts notice when you flap your yap to Don Jr. on air about your plan to use state power to punish a media outlet for being mean to Elon Musk. Who knew!

The DC federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, blocking Bailey from harassing Media Matters for America (MMFA) for pointing out — truthfully! — that ads for major brands were appearing next to Nazi stuff on Twitter. He also detailed Bailey’s subtle-as-a-brick campaign of retaliatory prosecution, in which he violated the shit out of MMFA’s free speech rights while cosplaying as a warrior for the First Amendment.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Transparently Bad Intentions

On November 16, 2023, MMFA senior reporter Eric Hananoki published screenshots of ads for companies such as Apple, Xfinity, and IBM next to posts calling Nazism a “spiritual awakening.” Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino had promised that this kind of thing could not happen, despite Musk firing all the trust and safety staff and issuing a general amnesty to the goons kicked out under the previous management. Advertisers were already in retreat thanks to Musk’s embrace of the racist Great Replacement theory when MMFA’s piece dropped, prompting an immediate exodus of major brands.

Musk lost his shit, tweeting out a promise to file a “thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.” Of course, there was no fraud. MMFA simply followed a lot of Nazi accounts, poked at the algorithm by opting out of ads for the dropship garbage that clogs Twitter these days, and refreshed the feed repeatedly.

And what Musk actually filed was less thermonuclear and more thermos of milk that rolled under the passenger seat three weeks ago. But he filed it in Texas, as is his wont, and so that rancid blob has been allowed to molder on the docket of wingnut Judge Reed O’Connor, who is unbothered that he has no personal jurisdiction over MMFA and Hananoki, who reside in DC and Maryland, respectively.

Egged on by Musk’s civil suit, the wingers began wanking themselves into a state of excitement, wondering if they might also convince some state prosecutors to join in the madness.

“Fraud is both a civil and criminal violation. There are 2 dozen+ conservative state Attorneys General,” tweeted Trump’s immigrant abuse czar Stephen Miller.

Of those “2 dozen+,” Bailey and Texas AG Ken Paxton, the two thirstiest lawmen in the land, were the ones to answer the call.

Paxton went first, issuing an investigative subpoena for evidence that MMFA had violated Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Back in DC, MMFA filed a motion for an injunction to block enforcement, along with a civil rights complaint, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which authorizes suits against government officials for “deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.”

Judge Amit Mehta enjoined the subpoena, at which point Paxton wandered off to attend to more pressing villain business — you can’t get fixated on any one skirmish when there are so many pregnant women and Latino lawmakers to harass.

That left Bailey to Leeroy Jenkins his way onto the scene.