A new legal filing by Donald Trump’s team in the battle against social media giants has compared the former president to Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.
In the 96-page filing submitted to the San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, Mr Trump’s legal team accused Twitter as well as the government of wanting to “suppress opinions and information about matters that Americans consider of vital interest”.
The brief likened Mr Trump to the astronomer Galileo, who was persecuted by the Catholic Church and was branded a heretic for saying the Earth revolves around the sun.
“Most people once believed these to be crackpot ideas; many still do. But crackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true. The earth does revolve around the sun, and it was Hunter Biden, not Russian disinformation agents, who dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence at a repair shop in Delaware,” Trump’s legal team wrote.
“Galileo spent his remaining days under house arrest for spreading heretical ideas, and thousands of dissidents today are arrested or killed by despotic governments eager to suppress ideas they disapprove of. But this is not the American way.”
The lawsuit brief accused social media companies of suppressing matters including claims that the 2020 election was stolen, efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, and origins of the pandemic.
It also said that the claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen was “correct or at least debatable”.
The filing was part of one of a series of class-action lawsuits the former president filed last year against social media giants, including Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The lawsuit accused Twitter of censoring him by permanently banning him from the platform after January 6 riots at the Capitol.
The lawsuit was dismissed in May but attempts are being made by his legal time to revive the case.
It came as Mr Trump announced his 2024 presidential run in what he said was “make America great and glorious again”.
“I tonight am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Mr Trump said.
