A federal judge has ordered several social media companies to turn over documents and answer questions within the next 30 days as part of the discovery phase in a lawsuit brought by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, which allege that the Biden administration colluded with tech giants to censor conservatives.

"A federal court granted our request for discovery & documents from top ranking Biden officials & social media companies to get to the bottom of their collusion to suppress & censor free speech," tweeted Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Tuesday, adding "No one has had the chance to look under the hood before - now we do."

"In May, Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit against top-ranking Biden Administration officials for allegedly colluding with social media giants to suppress freedom of speech on a number of topics including the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks, and election integrity," Schmitt said in a Tuesday statement. "Today, the Court granted our motion for discovery, paving the way for my Office to gather important documents to get to the bottom of that alleged collusion – this is a huge development."

ZeroHedge will be very interested to see if there are any further communications between the government and Twitter regarding our February 2020 ban for suggesting that Covid-19 may have emerged from a Wuhan lab, which notably made its way into a FOIA release of Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails.

As The Center Square's Joe Mueller writes of the Missouri case:

The four-count lawsuit alleges the social media companies labeled content "disinformation" and "misinformation." The suit contends the suppression constitutes government action and violates freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.