Getty Images | Bill Clark
A federal judge has ordered the Missouri attorney general to drop an investigation into Media Matters for America, a nonprofit journalism organization that incurred the ire of Elon Musk when it published an article revealing that Musk's Platform X placed ads alongside pro-Nazi posts.
In March, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a warrant demanding the release of the names and addresses of all of Media Matters' Missouri-based donors, as well as a number of internal communications and documents related to the group's investigation into Musk and X. Bailey also filed a lawsuit asking the Cole County District Court for an order enforcing the warrant.
Media Matters countered by suing Bailey in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Last week, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta issued a preliminary injunction preventing Bailey from enforcing the civil discovery demand and pursuing the related lawsuit.
Mehta had issued a similar injunction against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton several months earlier. On August 23, Mehta filed a memorandum outlining the reasons for granting Media Matters' request for a preliminary injunction against Bailey.
Media Matters pointed out that the claim that Bailey retaliated to suppress speech was likely to succeed, Mehta wrote:
The court has already ruled that the announcement of the investigation and the issuance of a CID by the defendant Paxton [Civil Investigative Demand] Demanding records about Media Matters' organization, funding, and journalism would sufficiently deter a news organization or journalist “of ordinary scrutiny” from speaking out on X-related matters again. Defendant Bailey has gone a step further. Not only has he filed suit to compel Missouri law enforcement, but he has also asked a state court to impose a civil penalty on Media Matters. Such action stifles free speech.
X did not deny the basic assumption of the article
Media Matters also “probably demonstrated that its reporting was not defamatory and therefore constituted protected speech,” Mehta wrote. In his public response to the November 2023 Media Matters article, X “does not dispute that advertisements did indeed appear alongside the extremist posts on the day in question,” Mehta wrote. He continued:
X stated that in addition to the “organic content of the Media Matters article,” it delivered “less than 50 ad impressions in total” (a fraction of the 5.5 billion ad impressions delivered that day), and acknowledged that [Media Matters reporter Eric] Hananoki and another person had seen advertisements for two of the brands mentioned in the article alongside the extremist content. X described these as “artificial experiences” but did not dispute the article's basic premise: that X's platform served advertisements for major brands alongside extremist content. Many other media outlets have published similar findings as recently as April 2024. These other stories confirm Hananoki's reporting and the plaintiffs' belief in its accuracy.
Mehta's ruling states that Bailey made clear that “the true purpose of his investigation” was political. “Significantly, Defendant Bailey explicitly linked the investigation to the upcoming election,” Mehta wrote in an online interview with Donald Trump Jr.
“This is absolutely a new front in the fight for free speech. This investigation is really critical, especially now as we move toward a 2024 election cycle,” Bailey said during the interview.
Bailey's lawsuit in Cole County District Court alleged that “Media Matters fraudulently solicited donations from Missourians to get advertisers to remove their ads from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms committed to free speech in America.” Bailey did not provide good evidence for that claim, Mehta wrote.
Missouri Assistant Attorney General Steven Reed “never identifies the allegedly fraudulent statements or omissions that Media Matters made to Missouri citizens to solicit donations,” Mehta wrote. “If he means to say that Media Matters' defamatory reporting While the article itself is a fraud, at no point does it make any connection between that content and Media Matters' fundraising efforts. For example, it does not claim that Media Matters used its coverage of X to solicit donations. In fact, the webpage on which the November 16 article appeared did not contain an explicit call for donations. Nor did it contain a donation link. Defamation is not fraud. It is therefore likely that justifying the investigation by framing the false report as a fraudulent fundraising effort is a pretext for retaliation.”
Bailey can appeal Mehta's order. If the order stands, the injunction will remain in effect until a final judgment is issued in Media Matters v. Bailey.