Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, published the never-before-seen e-mails on social media platform X, detailing direct intervention from the White House to “reduce the visibility” of certain books administration officials wanted censored. Largely centered around the pandemic, the newly disclosed files reveal federal government involvement in censoring not only social media sites, which had previously been reported, but also attempting to control or influence what research Americans could access as they weighed personal medical decisions.Newly released e-mails reveal that the Biden administration engaged in an information manipulation operation by pressuring Amazon to censor books whose content challenged the administration’s official positions and narratives.
THE AMAZON FILES – “feeling pressure from the White House”
Internal docs subpoenaed by @JudiciaryGOP & @Weaponization indicate that @amazon bowed down to Biden White House pressure to censor BOOKS.
🧵 Thread:
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
In one series of e-mails from March 2021, Andrew Slavitt, a longtime health official who worked on the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response team, expressed concern over vaccine-related books showing up in Amazon searches.
“If you search for ‘vaccines’ under books, I see what comes up. I haven’t looked beyond that but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning,” he wrote a group of others also serving within the executive office of the president.
Slavitt sent an e-mail demanding to know who he and other White House colleagues could speak with at Amazon to discuss what he termed “high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation” purportedly appearing in search results.
In one response, Zach Butterworth, President Joe Biden’s private sector liaison, expressed concern that after searching the word “vaccine” on Amazon there were books that did not have a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warning displayed.
An internal Amazon e-mail circulated roughly an hour after Slavitt’s e-mail stated that the company would not be doing a manual intervention — not because of censorship concerns, but because the public relations team felt that the action would have been “too visible.” The e-mail also confirms White House pressure to remove books or display government-approved notices alongside disfavored content.
“The WH will probably ask why we don’t tag the content like FB-Twitter do if we aren’t taking it down. That is an option being explored but that we don’t want to disclose to avoid boxing in,” the e-mail stated.
Teams were directed to not take any action that was “visible” or might “draw more attention.”
In an internal e-mail thread several hours later with the subject line “Vaccine misinformation in bookstore,” an Amazon official recommended pushing back against the Biden administration, advising that “we believe that retailers are different than social media communities which means we review the content we make available, where we make it available in our store, and how we address content that customers find disappointing.
The unnamed company employee stated that Amazon provides “our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable,” which Jordan said is the reason the White House was “so upset with Amazon.”
A week later, Biden administration officials had a meeting with Amazon employees. An internal e-mail from the company shows that its officials wanted clarification on whether the White House sought the removal of books, different curating of search results, or both.
Three days after the meeting, Amazon staff admitted to “feeling pressure from the White House,” according to an e-mail released by the Judiciary Committee. The same e-mail advised Buzzfeed (which released the salacious but discredited Steele dossier) would likely be running a hit piece, blasting Amazon for Covid-related books available on the site.
Pursuant to the anticipated bad press and White House pressure, company staffers scheduled a meeting to debate additional steps Amazon may have wanted to take to reduce the visibility of books the government disfavored.
“After the White House spent a week berating Amazon, what did the online bookstore do?” Jordan asked. The company enacted a “Do Not Promote” tag on books that questioned Covid vaccines.
“That’s right,” Jordan wrote. “Amazon caved to the pressure from the Biden White House to censor speech.”
Jordan ended the thread by saying the GOP House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are currently investigating the matter.
"To be continued..." Jordan concluded.
