Best-selling author Kevin Trudeau has come under fire again for violating an injunction banning him from making infomercials that misrepresent the contents of his latest book entitled “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.” To read the FTC’s brief in support of contempt, click here.

If successful, this will be the second contempt order entered against Trudeau. Trudeau has had several run-ins with the FTC, as detailed in the case filings archived at the FTC website.

This latest Trudeau incident provides some insight into the intersection of supplement marketing practices and the first amendment. The FTC could not, consistent with the First Amendment, prevent Trudeau from writing about whatever he chose in his books. However, the FTC can, and has, enjoined Trudeau from making unfair and deceptive claims about what he writes in those books, including, as in this instance, claims that a weight loss plan is “easy” when it actually involves eating a 500 calorie starvation diet combined with daily injections of a prescription drug banned in the U.S.