The latest indictment against former US president Donald Trump has sparked a flurry of debates over the defence argument by his attorney, who cited First Amendment protection of free speech.&nbsp;

Charges have been filed against Trump for allegedly orchestrating efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election in which he was defeated.&nbsp;

As per the court document, the former president is charged with a "conspiracy to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud and deceit".

Legal expert and Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, Gregory P. Magarian, spoke to WION providing insights into the ongoing debate.&nbsp;

The First Amendment provides safeguards for political expression, even if it involves telling lies. However, the current indictment does not involve such a charge and rather it talks about an alleged "conspiracy" by the former president.&nbsp;

However, the question remains whether any actions by Trump can be classified as a criminal conspiracy.&nbsp;

Professor Magarian said the determination of whether speech loses its First Amendment protection is a "question of definitions". &nbsp;

"If a person speaks in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy, that speech is not protected by the First Amendment. In order to prove criminal conspiracy, the government must prove criminal intent. That intent requirement serves both to set a rigorous standard for serious criminal liability and to safeguard First Amendment interests," the professor noted.&nbsp;

<h2>Scope of First Amendment protection&nbsp;</h2>

Professor Magarian clarified that the indictment against Trump does not appear to significantly implicate his First Amendment rights.&nbsp;

While the indictment references Trump's statements, the expert said it employs these statements "either as bases for charges or as evidence needed to prove charges". &nbsp;

"Those sorts of uses of defendants’ statements are routine in criminal law. Think of fraud, blackmail, perjury, suborning perjury, making terroristic threats, or attempting to contract for some unlawful act. &nbsp;

"All of those are crimes that can be (and commonly are) committed entirely through speech. Could some attempt by the prosecution, in this case, to use a particular statement by Trump in a particular way implicate his First Amendment rights? I can’t rule out that possibility in a complicated criminal proceeding that has yet to unfold."

However, he also said that it remains possible for specific statements to be questioned in terms of their implications on the First Amendment, the current indictment does not inherently raise substantial concerns.

"Nothing evident from the indictment raises any serious First Amendment issue that I can see," he said.&nbsp;

He pointed out that if, for instance, "a person says 'I think it would be good for the country if [a given criminal conspiracy] succeeded,' that statement lacks the requisite criminal intent, and the First Amendment protects it. &nbsp;But if a person says to another person, 'I hereby instruct or request that you take [certain actions] in order to advance [a given criminal conspiracy],' the requisite criminal intent is present, and the First Amendment does not protect the statement.

<h2>Legal rulings&nbsp;</h2>

Professor Magarian highlighted that "US courts have held, in a variety of cases spanning generations, that speech in furtherance of various criminal activities is not protected speech."

Terming the First Amendment defence by Trump a "tenuous and contrived" legal argument," the expert concluded, "Trump’s First Amendment argument is not, in my judgment, a serious argument".

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The latest indictment against former US president Donald Trump has sparked a flurry of debates over the defence argument by his attorney, who cited First Amendment protection of free speech.

The latest indictment against former US president Donald Trump has sparked a flurry of debates over the defence argument by his attorney, who cited First Amendment protection of free speech. Charges have been filed against Trump for allegedly orchestrating efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election in which he was defeated. As per the court document, the former president is charged with a "conspiracy to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud and deceit". Legal expert and Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, Gregory P. Magarian, spoke to WION providing insights into the ongoing debate. The First Amendment provides safeguards for political expression, even if it involves telling lies. However, the current indictment does not involve such a charge and rather it talks about an alleged "conspiracy" by the former president. However, the question remains whether any actions by Trump can be classified as a criminal conspiracy. Professor Magarian said the determination of whether speech loses its First Amendment protection is a "question of definitions". "If a person speaks in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy, that speech is not protected by the First Amendment. In order to prove criminal conspiracy, the government must prove criminal intent. That intent requirement serves both to set a rigorous standard for serious criminal liability and to safeguard First Amendment interests," the professor noted. Scope of First Amendment protection Professor Magarian clarified that the indictment against Trump does not appear to significantly implicate his First Amendment rights. While the indictment references Trump's statements, the expert said it employs these statements "either as bases for charges or as evidence needed to prove charges". "Those sorts of uses of defendants’ statements are routine in criminal law. Think of fraud, blackmail, perjury, suborning perjury, making terroristic threats, or attempting to contract for some unlawful act. "All of those are crimes that can be (and commonly are) committed entirely through speech. Could some attempt by the prosecution, in this case, to use a particular statement by Trump in a particular way implicate his First Amendment rights? I can’t rule out that possibility in a complicated criminal proceeding that has yet to unfold." However, he also said that it remains possible for specific statements to be questioned in terms of their implications on the First Amendment, the current indictment does not inherently raise substantial concerns. "Nothing evident from the indictment raises any serious First Amendment issue that I can see," he said. He pointed out that if, for instance, "a person says 'I think it would be good for the country if [a given criminal conspiracy] succeeded,' that statement lacks the requisite criminal intent, and the First Amendment protects it. But if a person says to another person, 'I hereby instruct or request that you take [certain actions] in order to advance [a given criminal conspiracy],' the requisite criminal intent is present, and the First Amendment does not protect the statement. Legal rulings Professor Magarian highlighted that "US courts have held, in a variety of cases spanning generations, that speech in furtherance of various criminal activities is not protected speech." Terming the First Amendment defence by Trump a "tenuous and contrived" legal argument," the expert concluded, "Trump’s First Amendment argument is not, in my judgment, a serious argument". WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here. ×

Legal expert deconstructs Trump's First Amendment defence, calls it 'tenuous and contrived argument'

The Pentagon Papers case was a triumph for press freedom. Or was it?

The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion rejecting the Nixon administration’s attempt to censor publication of a secret history of the Vietnam War was just three paragraphs long and declared only that the government had not overcome a “heavy presumption” against prior restraints, on that occasion.

The vote was, moreover, fairly close, 6-3. Every justice contributed a concurring or dissenting opinion, none of which got more than two votes. You need a spreadsheet to make sense of who voted for what, but the bottom line is at odds with the conventional view that the case was a flat-out First Amendment victory.

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“A majority of the Supreme Court not only left open the possibility of prior restraints in other cases but of criminal sanctions being imposed on the press following publication of the Pentagon Papers themselves,” Floyd Abrams, who represented The New York Times in the case, wrote in his 2014 book, “Friend of the Court.”

There are, it turns out, two ways to understand the Pentagon Papers decision. One is that it was a potent vindication of press freedom establishing a bedrock principle: The government cannot stop the new media from providing information to citizens in a democracy.

Another view takes account of the letter and the limits of the decision. Even as to prior restraints, the Supreme Court left the door slightly ajar. As to the possibility of punishing the press&nbsp;after&nbsp;publication, two justices in the majority wrote that they had no doubt that news organizations could be prosecuted under the espionage laws.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-administration-secretly-seized-phone-records-of-times-reporters-389303">Trump administration secretly seized phone records of Times reporters</a>

To be sure, the decision has taken on a symbolic weight that has swamped its technical holding, said Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago and an editor of a volume of essays commemorating the 50th anniversary of the decision, “National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press.”

“The case created a largely overwhelming sense that the press cannot be either enjoined from or prosecuted for publishing national secrets,” he said. “That’s become the expectation as a result of Pentagon Papers.”

But even if the decision seems to have created near-absolute protection for the press, he went on, it addressed only one piece of the relationship between citizens and their government.

An intermediary, the press, was protected. But neither its sources nor its readers gained rights.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/number-of-journalists-killed-for-their-reporting-doubled-in-2020-351577">Number of journalists killed for their reporting doubled in 2020</a>

“What Pentagon Papers and its successor decisions created,” Stone said, “was an incoherent state of the law.”

The decision did not live up to its promise, Anthony Lewis, a Supreme Court reporter and columnist for The Times and an authority on the First Amendment, wrote in his 1991 book, “Make No Law.”

“The Pentagon Papers case was a famous victory for the press, and for the Madisonian principle that the public must know what its government is doing,” wrote Lewis, who died in 2013. “Or so it seemed at the time. Later decisions showed that it was not much of a victory.”

Prior restraints against the press may have been effectively barred, Lewis wrote, but the Supreme Court did not hesitate to block books by former government officials who sought to write about national security secrets they had learned in the course of their employment.

In those later decisions, Stone said, “the court took the view that there is no right to leak and no public right to information.”

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-china-is-stifling-press-freedom-in-hong-kong-330040">How China is stifling press freedom in Hong Kong</a>

The decision had another, darker side, wrote Alexander Bickel, the Yale law professor who argued the case for The Times in the Supreme Court.

“The American press was freer before it won its battle with the government,” he wrote in his classic 1975 book, “The Morality of Consent.”

“Through one civil and two world wars and other wars, there had never been an effort by the federal government to censor a newspaper by attempting to impose a prior restraint,” he wrote. “That spell was broken, and in a sense, freedom was thus diminished.”

Justice William O. Douglas, who was in the majority in 1971, wrote two years later that the vote had been too close and had followed two weeks of successful government-imposed censorship.

“We have allowed ominous inroads to be made on the historic freedom of the newspapers,” he wrote. “The effort to suppress the publication of the Pentagon Papers failed only by a narrow margin and actually succeeded for a brief spell in imposing prior restraint on our press for the first time in our history.”

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/russia-tells-us-to-mind-own-business-over-media-freedom-311598">Russia tells US to 'mind own business' over media freedom</a>

It was unimaginable, though, that the Supreme Court would rule out prior restraints entirely, and that posed a litigation-strategy puzzle for Bickel when he argued before the justices.

He conceded, at least in the abstract, that courts could stop a publication if it would “lead directly and unavoidably to a disastrous event.”

Justice Potter Stewart explored the point. What if, he asked, disclosure of sensitive information in wartime “would result in the sentencing to death of 100 young men whose only offense had been that they were 19 years old and had low draft numbers?”

Bickel tried to duck the question, but the justice pressed him: “You would say that the Constitution requires that it be published and that these men die?”

Bickel yielded, to the consternation of some of The Times’ allies. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that my inclinations of humanity overcome the somewhat more abstract devotion to the First Amendment.”

As a matter of litigation tactics, it was a necessary answer, said David Rudenstine, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City and the author of “The Day the Presses Stopped,” a history of the case.

“I don’t think an advocate could say anything else,” Rudenstine said, “unless you really wanted to lose the case.”

Still, Bickel’s response outraged the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an unusual brief that same day disavowing Bickel’s answer. It said Stewart’s question “must be answered in a totally different manner” and that “the answer is, painfully but simply, that the right of a free people to determine its destiny has been, and should continue to be, paramount to any attempt by the government to impinge upon, erode or ultimately destroy the right of the people to know.”

Bickel had made another concession when he argued the case in the federal appeals court in New York. Asked for an example of a government secret that would justify a prior restraint, he posited, presciently as it turned out, one in which “the hydrogen bomb turns up.”

Eight years later, on the only other occasion on which the federal government has sought a prior restraint on national security grounds, a federal judge in Wisconsin barred The Progressive magazine from publishing an article called “The H-bomb Secret,” which included detailed instructions for making a hydrogen bomb.

While the appeal was pending, others published similar information and the government dropped its case.

As that case suggests, prior restraints that actually keep information already in the hands of the press from the public are hard to accomplish. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in the Pentagon Papers case, more than a dozen newspapers had published parts of them. These days, a whistleblower like Daniel Ellsberg could skip the intermediaries entirely and post documents directly on the internet.

So far, there have been no prosecutions of journalists in the United States for seeking or publishing classified information, but the espionage laws on their face may well be read to forbid possession and publication of classified information by the press.

The press’s victory in the Pentagon Papers case may have been incomplete. But a loss would have been devastating.

“What would be the law today if the case had come out differently?” Rudenstine asked. “It’s very possible that there could have been a prosecution of The Times. That would have changed American law quite a lot.”

“The general thought,” he said, “was that if you lost the prior restraint case that there was no chance of winning the criminal prosecution.”

The opposite happened, said Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia University and the other editor of “National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press.” “As a practical matter, the press and the government have arrived at the state of mind that there will not be prior restraints or subsequent prosecutions, that that would violate the spirit of the First Amendment,” he said. “Apart from the Progressive case, the government has not gone after the press in either form.”

But he added that this was in large part a product of mature accommodation among responsible institutions, one that was at risk during the Donald Trump administration.

“The continuing viability of a fulsome Pentagon Papers doctrine does not apply in the context of a near-authoritarian government like the one we had,” he said. “It’s those kinds of ambiguities about Pentagon Papers that makes the whole system much more vulnerable when you have a true threat to democracy.”

The Pentagon Papers case was a triumph for press freedom. Or was it? The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion rejecting the Nixon administration’s attempt to censor publication of a secret history of the Vietnam War was just three paragraphs long and declared only that the government had not overcome a “heavy presumption” against prior restraints, on that occasion.

The Pentagon Papers case was a triumph for press freedom. Or was it? The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion rejecting the Nixon administration’s attempt to censor publication of a secret history of the Vietnam War was just three paragraphs long and declared only that the government had not overcome a “heavy presumption” against prior restraints, on that occasion. The vote was, moreover, fairly close, 6-3. Every justice contributed a concurring or dissenting opinion, none of which got more than two votes. You need a spreadsheet to make sense of who voted for what, but the bottom line is at odds with the conventional view that the case was a flat-out First Amendment victory. Also read | US says it will no longer seize reporters' records in leak probes “A majority of the Supreme Court not only left open the possibility of prior restraints in other cases but of criminal sanctions being imposed on the press following publication of the Pentagon Papers themselves,” Floyd Abrams, who represented The New York Times in the case, wrote in his 2014 book, “Friend of the Court.” There are, it turns out, two ways to understand the Pentagon Papers decision. One is that it was a potent vindication of press freedom establishing a bedrock principle: The government cannot stop the new media from providing information to citizens in a democracy. Another view takes account of the letter and the limits of the decision. Even as to prior restraints, the Supreme Court left the door slightly ajar. As to the possibility of punishing the press after publication, two justices in the majority wrote that they had no doubt that news organizations could be prosecuted under the espionage laws. Also read | Trump administration secretly seized phone records of Times reporters To be sure, the decision has taken on a symbolic weight that has swamped its technical holding, said Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago and an editor of a volume of essays commemorating the 50th anniversary of the decision, “National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press.” “The case created a largely overwhelming sense that the press cannot be either enjoined from or prosecuted for publishing national secrets,” he said. “That’s become the expectation as a result of Pentagon Papers.” But even if the decision seems to have created near-absolute protection for the press, he went on, it addressed only one piece of the relationship between citizens and their government. An intermediary, the press, was protected. But neither its sources nor its readers gained rights. Also read | Number of journalists killed for their reporting doubled in 2020 “What Pentagon Papers and its successor decisions created,” Stone said, “was an incoherent state of the law.” The decision did not live up to its promise, Anthony Lewis, a Supreme Court reporter and columnist for The Times and an authority on the First Amendment, wrote in his 1991 book, “Make No Law.” “The Pentagon Papers case was a famous victory for the press, and for the Madisonian principle that the public must know what its government is doing,” wrote Lewis, who died in 2013. “Or so it seemed at the time. Later decisions showed that it was not much of a victory.” Prior restraints against the press may have been effectively barred, Lewis wrote, but the Supreme Court did not hesitate to block books by former government officials who sought to write about national security secrets they had learned in the course of their employment. In those later decisions, Stone said, “the court took the view that there is no right to leak and no public right to information.” Also read | How China is stifling press freedom in Hong Kong The decision had another, darker side, wrote Alexander Bickel, the Yale law professor who argued the case for The Times in the Supreme Court. “The American press was freer before it won its battle with the government,” he wrote in his classic 1975 book, “The Morality of Consent.” “Through one civil and two world wars and other wars, there had never been an effort by the federal government to censor a newspaper by attempting to impose a prior restraint,” he wrote. “That spell was broken, and in a sense, freedom was thus diminished.” Justice William O. Douglas, who was in the majority in 1971, wrote two years later that the vote had been too close and had followed two weeks of successful government-imposed censorship. “We have allowed ominous inroads to be made on the historic freedom of the newspapers,” he wrote. “The effort to suppress the publication of the Pentagon Papers failed only by a narrow margin and actually succeeded for a brief spell in imposing prior restraint on our press for the first time in our history.” Also read | Russia tells US to 'mind own business' over media freedom It was unimaginable, though, that the Supreme Court would rule out prior restraints entirely, and that posed a litigation-strategy puzzle for Bickel when he argued before the justices. He conceded, at least in the abstract, that courts could stop a publication if it would “lead directly and unavoidably to a disastrous event.” Justice Potter Stewart explored the point. What if, he asked, disclosure of sensitive information in wartime “would result in the sentencing to death of 100 young men whose only offense had been that they were 19 years old and had low draft numbers?” Bickel tried to duck the question, but the justice pressed him: “You would say that the Constitution requires that it be published and that these men die?” Bickel yielded, to the consternation of some of The Times’ allies. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that my inclinations of humanity overcome the somewhat more abstract devotion to the First Amendment.” As a matter of litigation tactics, it was a necessary answer, said David Rudenstine, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City and the author of “The Day the Presses Stopped,” a history of the case. “I don’t think an advocate could say anything else,” Rudenstine said, “unless you really wanted to lose the case.” Still, Bickel’s response outraged the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an unusual brief that same day disavowing Bickel’s answer. It said Stewart’s question “must be answered in a totally different manner” and that “the answer is, painfully but simply, that the right of a free people to determine its destiny has been, and should continue to be, paramount to any attempt by the government to impinge upon, erode or ultimately destroy the right of the people to know.” Bickel had made another concession when he argued the case in the federal appeals court in New York. Asked for an example of a government secret that would justify a prior restraint, he posited, presciently as it turned out, one in which “the hydrogen bomb turns up.” Eight years later, on the only other occasion on which the federal government has sought a prior restraint on national security grounds, a federal judge in Wisconsin barred The Progressive magazine from publishing an article called “The H-bomb Secret,” which included detailed instructions for making a hydrogen bomb. While the appeal was pending, others published similar information and the government dropped its case. As that case suggests, prior restraints that actually keep information already in the hands of the press from the public are hard to accomplish. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in the Pentagon Papers case, more than a dozen newspapers had published parts of them. These days, a whistleblower like Daniel Ellsberg could skip the intermediaries entirely and post documents directly on the internet. So far, there have been no prosecutions of journalists in the United States for seeking or publishing classified information, but the espionage laws on their face may well be read to forbid possession and publication of classified information by the press. The press’s victory in the Pentagon Papers case may have been incomplete. But a loss would have been devastating. “What would be the law today if the case had come out differently?” Rudenstine asked. “It’s very possible that there could have been a prosecution of The Times. That would have changed American law quite a lot.” “The general thought,” he said, “was that if you lost the prior restraint case that there was no chance of winning the criminal prosecution.” The opposite happened, said Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia University and the other editor of “National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press.” “As a practical matter, the press and the government have arrived at the state of mind that there will not be prior restraints or subsequent prosecutions, that that would violate the spirit of the First Amendment,” he said. “Apart from the Progressive case, the government has not gone after the press in either form.” But he added that this was in large part a product of mature accommodation among responsible institutions, one that was at risk during the Donald Trump administration. “The continuing viability of a fulsome Pentagon Papers doctrine does not apply in the context of a near-authoritarian government like the one we had,” he said. “It’s those kinds of ambiguities about Pentagon Papers that makes the whole system much more vulnerable when you have a true threat to democracy.”

A first amendment case that made an ‘Incoherent State of the Law’

A lawsuit has been filed by a non-profit group against US President Donald Trump's executive order targetting social media firms Facebook and Twitter claiming&nbsp;the edict violates free-speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. 
 
The suit, filed in US&nbsp;District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the executive order violates the First Amendment by curtailing and chilling the constitutionally protected speech of online platforms and individuals.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/white-house-doubles-down-dares-twitter-to-block-another-trumps-tweet-301891">White House doubles down &amp; dares Twitter to block another Trump's tweet</a>

The Justice Department declined to comment, according to spokeswoman Brianna Herlihy.

Trump, irate over&nbsp;Twitter’s move to append fact-checking labels to his inaccurate tweets&nbsp;about mail-in voting, issued an executive order May 28 that seeks to&nbsp;rescind legal immunity social networks have under current US&nbsp;law if they ''censor''&nbsp;speech.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-threatens-to-shut-social-media-companies-after-twitter-adds-warning-to-his-tweets-301375">Trump threatens to shut social media companies after Twitter adds warning to his tweets</a>

&nbsp;

The law, as it currently stands, lets internet companies like&nbsp;Facebook, YouTube and&nbsp;Twitter&nbsp;moderate content on their services as they see fit, while protecting them from lawsuits over content shared on them.

He had asked federal regulators to look at provisions, contained in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, that insulate the companies from liability for content posted by users.

A lawsuit has been filed by a non-profit group against US President Donald Trump's executive order targetting social media firms Facebook and Twitter claiming the edict violates free-speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment.

A lawsuit has been filed by a non-profit group against US President Donald Trump's executive order targetting social media firms Facebook and Twitter claiming the edict violates free-speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. The suit, filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the executive order violates the First Amendment by curtailing and chilling the constitutionally protected speech of online platforms and individuals. Also read: White House doubles down & dares Twitter to block another Trump's tweet The Justice Department declined to comment, according to spokeswoman Brianna Herlihy. Trump, irate over Twitter’s move to append fact-checking labels to his inaccurate tweets about mail-in voting, issued an executive order May 28 that seeks to rescind legal immunity social networks have under current US law if they ''censor'' speech. Also read: Trump threatens to shut social media companies after Twitter adds warning to his tweets The law, as it currently stands, lets internet companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate content on their services as they see fit, while protecting them from lawsuits over content shared on them. He had asked federal regulators to look at provisions, contained in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, that insulate the companies from liability for content posted by users.

Lawsuit filed against Trump's executive order targeting social media firms

A free speech group sued US President Donald Trump for blocking Twitter users from his @realDonaldTrump account, arguing the practice violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The lawsuit, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York and joined by seven individual Twitter users, claims Trump blocked a number of accounts whose owners replied to his tweets with comments that criticised, mocked or disagreed with the president.

Trump&#39;s blocking of the accounts amounted to an unconstitutional effort to suppress dissent, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York.

Because Trump frequently turns to Twitter to make policy statements, his account qualifies as a public forum from which the government cannot exclude people on the basis of their views, according to the lawsuit. Twitter users are unable to see or respond to tweets from accounts that block them.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump&#39;s tweets were considered &quot;official statements by the president of the United States.&quot;

The suit names Spicer and Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, as defendants in addition to Trump. It asks for the blocking to be deemed unconstitutional and seeks an injunction to require the president to unblock users.

The complaint follows a letter from the Knight Institute to Trump last month warning it would sue if users were not unblocked.

&quot;Everyone being able to see the president&#39;s tweets feels vital to democracy,&quot; Joseph Papp, one of the seven Twitter users involved in the suit, said in a statement. Papp, an author, said he had been a registered Republican for 10 years and did not join the suit for political reasons, but that he &quot;felt a deep sense of unease&quot; when he was blocked.

Trump&#39;s Twitter use has drawn intense interest for his unvarnished commentary about his agenda and attacks on critics. His tweets often lead to tens of thousands of retweets and comments and can shape the news.

The Knight Institute&#39;s arguments may have merit, independent free speech and internet law scholars say, in part because Trump&#39;s tweets are used to announce policy decisions or can influence legislation. Previous cases involving politicians blocking users on Facebook may bolster its case.

The federal suit was filed in the Southern District of New York.

A free-speech group sued US President Donald Trump for blocking Twitter users from his @realDonaldTrump account

A free speech group sued US President Donald Trump for blocking Twitter users from his @realDonaldTrump account, arguing the practice violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The lawsuit, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York and joined by seven individual Twitter users, claims Trump blocked a number of accounts whose owners replied to his tweets with comments that criticised, mocked or disagreed with the president. Trump's blocking of the accounts amounted to an unconstitutional effort to suppress dissent, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Because Trump frequently turns to Twitter to make policy statements, his account qualifies as a public forum from which the government cannot exclude people on the basis of their views, according to the lawsuit. Twitter users are unable to see or respond to tweets from accounts that block them. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump's tweets were considered "official statements by the president of the United States." The suit names Spicer and Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, as defendants in addition to Trump. It asks for the blocking to be deemed unconstitutional and seeks an injunction to require the president to unblock users. The complaint follows a letter from the Knight Institute to Trump last month warning it would sue if users were not unblocked. "Everyone being able to see the president's tweets feels vital to democracy," Joseph Papp, one of the seven Twitter users involved in the suit, said in a statement. Papp, an author, said he had been a registered Republican for 10 years and did not join the suit for political reasons, but that he "felt a deep sense of unease" when he was blocked. Trump's Twitter use has drawn intense interest for his unvarnished commentary about his agenda and attacks on critics. His tweets often lead to tens of thousands of retweets and comments and can shape the news. The Knight Institute's arguments may have merit, independent free speech and internet law scholars say, in part because Trump's tweets are used to announce policy decisions or can influence legislation. Previous cases involving politicians blocking users on Facebook may bolster its case. The federal suit was filed in the Southern District of New York.

Trump violates 'First Amendment of the US Constitution'