House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) posted a thread on X Monday he titled “The Amazon Files,” revealing emails he said show the tech company caved to pressure from the Biden administration “to censor books.”
The emails sent from the Biden administration to Amazon and internal messages from the company showed that on the same day that Amazon met with the White House in March 2021, the company “enabl[ed] Do Not Promote” for books that expressed hesitancy about the COVID vaccines, Jordan said.
According to emails the White House sent to Amazon nearly three years ago, then-senior White House advisor Andy Slavitt — who at the same time was pressuring Facebook to suppress vaccine-related stories — asked who he could talk to at “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation” at Amazon. Slavitt added in his email that a search for “vaccines” under books on Amazon yielded “concerning” results.
“How did the Biden White House conclude that there was ‘propaganda and misinformation’ in books sold in Amazon’s bookstore? The White House ran keyword searches for controversial topics, such as ‘vaccine,’ and emailed Amazon when it didn’t like how the search results appeared,” Jordan said.
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 response to the Biden administration’s request, Amazon appeared to discuss taking action but held off on “doing a manual intervention” because the company’s PR team was afraid such a move would be “too visible” and would be picked up by news outlets, such as Fox News.
“Why was the Biden White House so upset with Amazon?” Jordan asked. “Because Amazon believed ‘retailers are different than social media communities’ & provided their ‘customers with access to a variety of viewpoints.’ For the Biden Admin, letting Americans think for themselves was unacceptable.”
Jordan wrote that on March 9, 2021, a week after the initial email, the White House met with Amazon. Internal documents revealed that one of Amazon’s main questions for the administration was, “Is the Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (both)?” In the internal documents revealed by Jordan, Amazon also admitted that it was “feeling pressure from the White House” as the company also anticipated a “negative story” published by BuzzFeed on books sold on Amazon “related to vaccine misinformation.”
On the same day as its meeting with the White House, Amazon said in internal discussions that it enabled its “Do Not Promote” for books that questioned the efficacy of the COVID vaccines, and the tech giant “also considered other ways ‘to reduce the visibility’ of certain books that the Biden White House disliked,” Jordan said.
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“That’s right. Amazon caved to the pressure from the Biden White House to censor speech,” the judiciary committee chairman added.
Jordan concluded the thread by saying that the Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are investigating the Biden administration’s effort to pressure Amazon to enforce more censorship.
The congressman’s findings add yet another company to the list of tech giants pressured by the Biden administration to censor vaccine-related information. Last summer, Jordan began releasing what he called the “Facebook Files,” saying the Biden administration pressured Facebook to stifle speech the White House didn’t like, including limiting The Daily Wire’s reach on the platform. Then in December, The Daily Wire reported that YouTube went along with the White House’s censorship requests before Facebook was pressured to follow suit, according to documents shared with Jordan.