A dozen House Republicans filed an amicus brief Tuesday in an ongoing lawsuit that alleges the Biden administration coordinated with social media companies to censor First Amendment-protected content about COVID-19 and Hunter Biden.

The members, who all sit on the House Judiciary Committee or its weaponization of government subcommittee, joined the case because they have “uncovered smoking gun documents showing how Big Tech and Big Government worked together to stifle free speech online,” according to committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH).

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The Republicans contended in the brief that the Biden administration had "coerced" speech about COVID-19 origins, the vaccine, and Hunter Biden's laptop.

They cited a trove of material they had subpoenaed from Meta, formerly known as Facebook, that indicated Meta employees were “under pressure” from the White House to suppress discourse about COVID-19 origins, a now widely debated topic.

One Meta employee said, according to an internal email included in the brief, that the company was “facing continued pressure” from the White House to also remove “vaccine discouraging content” in April 2021, when the COIVD-19 vaccine had been approved four months prior and was new to many Americans.

The brief also detailed testimony the Republicans heard from an official with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force related to Hunter Biden’s laptop, which first made headlines in the New York Post in the heat of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in October 2020.

The official, Laura Dehmlow, told the Republicans the FBI task force would routinely warn social media companies of a forthcoming “hack-and-leak” operation. However, when confronted with the New York Post’s story, the companies asked the FBI FITF if the laptop was real and the FBI declined to confirm its authenticity, according to Dehmlow.

The Republicans charged that the forewarnings suggested a “well-executed, months-long plan” within the FBI to help the Biden campaign.

“Rather than acknowledge the truth, the FBI actively influenced and deceived the social media companies to censor the story,” they wrote in the brief.

The brief was filed in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in coordination with the conservative group America First Legal and Spero Law LLC as part of the ongoing lawsuit Missouri v. Biden. The case examines the “unique free speech issues” presented by the “explosion of social-media platforms.”

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In July, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who has overseen the case in a federal court in Louisiana, issued a sweeping preliminary injunction against the Biden administration, stating in a 155-page memorandum of his decision that he found an “almost dystopian scenario” where the government “seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

The Biden administration appealed the decision, which is now pending in the 5th Circuit.