Missouri AG Opens Investigation into Media Matters after Left-Wing Watchdog Pushed Advertisers to Leave X

Republican Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey formally opened an investigation into Media Matters for America after the left-wing watchdog pushed numerous advertisers to leave X in recent weeks.

In a letter dated Monday, Bailey notified Media Matters president and CEO Angelo Carusone of his office’s pending investigation into the organization’s allegedly fraudulent solicitation of donations from Missouri residents amid its efforts to target the social-media platform. The investigation comes three weeks after multibillionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for swaying several corporations into pulling advertising from his company.

“As you are no doubt aware, a federal lawsuit has been filed against Media Matters, raising serious allegations that your firm falsely and deceptively manipulated the algorithm on X (formerly known as Twitter) through coordinated, inauthentic behavior and that you did so in an attempt to defame the organization and cause advertisers to pull their support from the platform, thus harming free speech,” Bailey wrote.

Last month, Media Matters published a series of reports claiming corporate ads on X were running beside “white nationalist and pro-Nazi content” in an effort to paint Musk and his organization as antisemitic. As a result, IBM, Apple, Disney, Lionsgate Entertainment, Sony, and many more firms began boycotting the platform. Musk, however, fired back at Media Matters with “thermonuclear” litigation, as he described it.

“The lawsuit alleges that you lied to the public, falsely suggesting that fringe, extremist content regularly appears next to content from corporate advertisers when in fact the opposite is true,” Bailey added. “At the same time, you appear to have used this coordinated, inauthentic activity to solicit charitable donations from consumers across the country,” including Missouri.

The attorney general specifically accused the media-watchdog group of violating his state’s consumer-protection laws, particularly “laws that prohibit nonprofit entities from soliciting funds under false pretenses,” in a concerted effort to simultaneously harm X’s business model and defraud Missourians. Bailey requested the preservation of all records concerning Media Matters’ “potentially unlawful business practices.”

“We have reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into pulling out of X, the last platform dedicated to free speech in America,” Bailey said in a press release. “Radicals are attempting to kill Twitter because they cannot control it, and we are not going to let Missourians get ripped off in the process. I’m fighting to ensure progressive tyrants masquerading as news outlets cannot manipulate the marketplace in order to wipe out free speech.”

Media Matters is also alleged to have conducted fraud in Texas, prompting Republican attorney general Ken Paxton to launch an investigation into the organization last month.

Over a week after filing the lawsuit, Musk publicly called out the brands for boycotting X and blackmailing him to change the platform’s free-speech policy.

“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f**k yourself,” he told the corporations, specifically naming Disney CEO Bob Iger who, along with Musk, attended the New York Times DealBook Summit in late November. “Go! F**k! Yourself! Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience.”