New internal emails from Amazon reveal that the tech giant ultimately censored books discussing the topic of Chinese Coronavirus vaccines after being pressured to do so by the Biden Administration.
As reported by the New York Post, the emails and other documents were released by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday in a series of posts on X, which Jordan referred to as “The Amazon Files.” The communications were obtained by a subpoena from the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which was established with the purpose of exposing abuse of federal powers to target political opponents, including collusion between the government and private sector entities such as Big Tech.
In an email dated March 2nd, 2021, Andrew Slavitt, a former senior advisor for COVID-19 in the Biden White House, asked “who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?”
“If you search for ‘vaccines’ under books, I see what comes up,” Slavitt said in a later email on the same day. “I haven’t looked beyond that but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning.”
In response, officials from Amazon expressed their hesitance at doing the White House’s bidding, saying “We will not be doing a manual intervention today. The team/PR feels very strongly that it is too visible, and will further compound the Harry/Sally narrative (which is getting the Fox News treatment today apparently), and won’t fix the problem long-term … because of customer behavior associates.”
The Amazon official later says that another company official “gave very direct guidance to the teams to be boring and not do anything that is visible and will draw more attention.” He then admitted that a tweak was in the works at the website which would redirect more customers’ search results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
One week later, on March 9th, 2021, company officials discussed a meeting which took place on that day between Amazon representatives and White House officials, discussing the “top talking points” to use going into the meeting.
“Is the Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?” reads one email. In another email, a company representative admits that Amazon was “feeling pressure from the White House Taskforce on this issue as well.”
Summarizing the findings of the internal communications, Jordan declared on X that “Amazon caved to the pressure from the Biden White House to censor speech.”
Jordan’s revelation comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in a case brought by the attorneys general of multiple Republican-led states, including Missouri and Louisiana, claiming that the Biden Administration illegally colluded with social media and Big Tech companies to censor free speech in discussions regarding the Chinese Coronavirus. Oral arguments are set to take place in March.