In his new lawsuit against Facebook, former President Donald Trump is claiming that Michelle Obama teamed up with her fellow Democrats to coerce the social media site into banning him.

Trump cited comments Michelle made after the Capitol riot back in January, when she said that it was “time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior.” She went on to say that companies needed to “permanently ban this man from their platforms,” referring to Trump, according to Newsweek.

Close

Trump’s lawsuit states that Michelle’s comments showcase the views of lawmakers who are making it “increasingly clear” that they want Trump and the “views and content” he espouses banned from Facebook.

Not stopping there, Trump also called out Vice President Kamala Harris for urging Facebook to suspend his account and pointed out that President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed revoking Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. The former president claimed that when heads of social media companies were required to appear at numerous congressional hearings where they were subjected to “lengthy, embarrassing questioning,” it was part of an attempt to coerce them to ban him.

“The message conveyed by Democrat legislators to Defendants was clear: use the authority of Section 230 to ban Plaintiff and those Putative Class Members who posted content and views contrary to these legislators preferred points of view or lose the competitive protections of Section 230 and tens of billions of dollars of market share altogether,” Trump’s lawsuit states.

Thanks to Section 230, which was passed back in 1996, social media companies have a lot of freedom in determining what stays on their platforms and what comes down. It also protects these companies from lawsuits focused on the content that’s published and circulated on their websites.

Trump was banned from Facebook in January after the Capitol riot in a move that he has since appealed. Facebook’s independent Oversight Board later upheld the platform’s decision to ban Trump, but disagreed that it should be “indefinite.” Last month, Facebook announced that Trump would be banned for two years.