Former Food & Drug Administration chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer director, lobbied for the censorship of tweets that might have harmed the bottom line of the company he was representing, according to the latest Twitter Files.
"Besides being former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on COVID public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021," according to Alex Berenson, an author on the pandemic and a former The New York Times reporter.
"Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year."
Internal Twitter communications reviewed by Berenson, under permission from new Twitter owner Elon Musk, showed Gottlieb used his authority as a former government official to lobby through the Twitter government censorship channels to censor a Dr. Brett Giroir tweet saying natural immunity was effective in place of a Pfizer vaccine.
Giroir was a more recent FDA chief under the Trump administration, too, but Gottlieb called the tweet "corrosive," fearing it would "end up going viral and driving news coverage," according to Berenson's review of internal Twitter emails.
Twitter moved the request by calling Gottlieb a former FDA chief, without mentioning he was sitting on Pfizer's board.
The conflict of interest and using government authority is the latest damning evidence of censorship of Trump-connected voices on Twitter, and the first of perhaps many promised by Musk under the loose heading of "Fauci Files" — a reference to retired White House COVID-19 face Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Giroir, who served at the height of the pandemic in spring 2020 under former President Donald Trump, was not suspended for the tweet, nor was the tweet blocked, but Twitter still shadow banned it — a term for how the social media platform dialed down reach on conservative voices.
"Twitter wound up flagging Giroir's tweet anyway, putting a misleading tag on it and preventing almost anyone from seeing it," according to Berenson, who was one of the COVID-19 reporters banned by Twitter before being reinstated under Musk's new ownership. "It remains tagged even though several large studies have confirmed the truth of Giroir's words."
The 13th edition of the Twitter Files continued its research into Gottlieb's malign influence over information during the pandemic, adding the Pfizer director also failed to block a tweet from a vaccine skeptic over the lack of need of vaccination for children.
While Twitter did not act, the censorship request came as the FDA would soon approve Pfizer's vaccination of children 5-11, setting up Pfizer for a large swath of Americans who would be going to get the government-purchased shot from Pfizer, Berenson reported.
Like before, the censorship request was passed in Twitter's channels as coming from "former FDA Commissioner Gottlieb," without mention his business interests as a Pfizer board director.
Berenson admits in his exposé he will be suing "the White House, [Andrew] Slavitt, Gottlieb, and Pfizer shortly" for Twitter moving to ban him.
Gottlieb used the guise of "direct threats, physical threats" to lobby for Twitter to ban Berenson's tweets that were skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Berenson.
"So how will Pfizer react to the black-and-white proof from Twitter's records that one of its most powerful board members secretly tried to suppress debate on the mRNA jabs that have has been by far its best-selling product since 2020?" Berenson's Twitter Files edition concludes.
"And will CNBC continue to let Gottlieb use it to mislead the public?"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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