“If there has been any attempt to defraud Missourians in order to trample on their free speech rights, I will root it out and hold bad actors accountable.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a petition for order to enforce civil investigative demand on Monday over Media Matters’ work to push advertisers to remove ads from X.
The order is similar to a subpoena, according to Fox News, and will force Media Matters to turn over documentation related to Bailey’s investigation into the nonprofit’s alleged fraudulent business practices.
Bailey launched an investigation into Media Matters in November 2023. This came after Media Matters published a report alleging that X would place advertisements next to "pro-Nazi content."
After the report, companies such as IBM, Disney, Sony, and Apple pulled advertisements from the social media platform. X owner Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against the organization and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation.
"My office has reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers into pulling out of X, the last social media platform dedicated to free speech in America, so we launched an investigation to get to the bottom of it," Bailey wrote in a statement.
"However, Media Matters has a sordid history of refusing to cooperate with investigations. I’m not going to let this activist group stonewall us. If there has been any attempt to defraud Missourians in order to trample on their free speech rights, I will root it out and hold bad actors accountable."
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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