Former President Donald Trump sued Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and their chief executives, raising the stakes in his battle against social media giants who have blocked him.
Billing the effort during a Wednesday press conference as a move to defend First Amendment rights, Trump filed three separate class-action lawsuits in federal court in Florida against the tech giants and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
The lawsuits seek court orders to restore his social-media accounts, along with punitive damages, to ensure other users can’t be banned or flagged by the tech giants. The legal team is being led by John P. Coale, a trial attorney involved in lawsuits against big tobacco companies.
“We’re going to hold big tech very accountable,” Trump said during the press conference at his Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. “If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone.”
