• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 24, 2015

An official from the Mississippi Attorney General's office proposed that the Motion Picture Association of America help coordinate a "media blitz" against Google -- which would include arranging for bad press on NBC's Today Show and in News Corp's The Wall Street Journal -- according to new court documents.

The documents, submitted by Google, include an email exchange in which an official with the Mississippi Attorney General's office proposed a "confidential plan" of attack to an MPAA lobbyist. That plan included engaging a PR firm "to create an attack on Google" and other companies that "are resisting" the Attorney General's efforts to address copyright infringement.

The Attorney General's plan involved arranging for the Today Show to run a piece, following which a "large investor of Google" would "come forward and say that Google needs to change its behavior," according to documents submitted on Thursday to a federal court in Manhattan.

Next, NewsCorp would "develop and place an editorial in the WSJ emphasizing that "Google's stock will lose value in the face of a sustained attack by AGs."

The email outlining the plan says that the "final step," if necessary, will involve issuing a subpoena to Google.

Google argues in its papers that the documents shows that Hood's attempt to subpoena documents relating to online piracy "was not the foundation of a legitimate investigation."