Weeks after Donald Trump began threatening to investigate tech companies for alleged political bias, the White House appears to be cracking down—or at least considering it. According to Bloomberg News, Trump has been considering an executive order that would direct government agencies to “thoroughly investigate” companies like Facebook and Google based on the premise that their alleged left-wing “bias” is harmful to users. “Executive departments and agencies with authorities that could be used to enhance competition among online platforms (agencies) shall, where consistent with other laws, use those authorities to promote competition and ensure that no online platform exercises market power in a way that harms consumers, including through the exercise of bias,” reads the draft order, which is still preliminary. In theory, federal agencies could recommend ways to “protect competition” online within a month after Trump signs it.

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The White House appears to be distancing itself from the memo. Later Monday, aides told The Washington Post that they didn’t know whether the draft had been vetted through normal policy channels, or even where it had originated. “Although the White House is concerned about the conduct of online platforms and their impact on society, this document is not the result of an official White House policymaking process,” deputy White House press secretary Lindsay Walters told CNBC. Still, the order is in keeping with the Trump administration’s broader goals. Trump and his allies have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks about “rigged” search results that they say are prejudiced against Republicans. Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he would meet with several state attorneys general on September 25 “to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.”

Whether the Justice Department has a case is another matter entirely. As I reported at the time, legal experts say there is no compelling argument to regulate private tech companies on the basis of alleged bias. “There is no evidence that there is any political motivation to whose speech is being blocked or targeted,” Mark Lemley, the director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology told me. “And even if there was, that simply isn’t an anti-trust issue.” Lata Nott, the executive director of the Freedom Forum Institute at the First Amendment Center, agreed, adding, “It doesn’t seem like a realistic legal tactic to accomplish what they say is their goal, which is apparently changing the content policies of these platforms.”

The same issues are evident in the draft order, which anti-trust experts say could challenge the independence of the Justice Department, and risk violating the First Amendment if Trump signs it. “This type of directive from the White House could be extremely dangerous because it incorrectly associates bias with competition,” Gene Kimmelman, the president of the policy group Public Knowledge and a former Justice Department anti-trust lawyer, told Bloomberg. Others say that the draft order is a transparently punitive measure: “It is less an executive order than it is part of the ongoing ritual maiming of tech that has consumed Washington for over a year,” Larry Downes, project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, told the outlet.

Executives like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai have all denied that their platforms are politically biased, and the only evidence of said bias remains a bogus study promoted by the president. More important, Trump’s own words and actions would likely undermine any case the government brings. Just as with his notorious travel ban, the president has already given his critics all the ammo they need to claim his executive actions are driven by his own unconstitutional biases. If the Justice Department investigates Facebook, Twitter, or Google now, they need only point to Trump’s Twitter account to prove they are being targeted for alleged anti-Trump leanings, rather than the more alarming reality that they are crushing the competition.