Twitter Files: Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb flagged tweets questioning COVID vaccine
Alex Berenson shared the 13th installment of Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’
By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News
The latest Twitter Files involving the tech giant’s response to the pandemic puts a focus on Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner and sitting board member of prominent COVID vaccine manufacturer Pfizer.
Alex Berenson, a vocal COVID contrarian whose past commentary on the vaccine has received scorn by critics and praise by fans, was the latest to be granted access to Elon Musk’s Twitter Files, publishing his findings on his “Unreported Truths” Substack newsletter.
Berenson shared an August 2021 email Gottlieb sent to Twitter’s senior public policy manager Todd O’Boyle flagging a tweet written by former Trump administration official Dr. Brett Giroir, who had written “It’s now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There’s no scientific justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection.”
According to Berenson, O’Boyle forward Gottlieb’s email to Twitter’s “Strategist Response” team, writing “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.”
Giroir’s tweet was later slapped with a “misleading” label and blocked any ability to like or share the tweet, telling Twitter users “Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.”
Dr. Scott Gottlieb is the latest figure to be swept up in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.” (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)
Gottlieb, a CNBC contributor who was a prominent media pundit in the height of the pandemic, flagged another tweet in Sept. 2021, one from Substack writer and COVID policy critic Justin Hart, which read “Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling.”
“Why Gottlieb objected to Hart’s words is not clear, but the Pfizer shot would soon be approved for children 5 to 11, representing another massive market for Pfizer, if parents could be convinced Covid was a real threat to their kids,” Berenson wrote.
In the August 2021 tweet Gottlieb flagged, Berenson was critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“This is whats promoted on Twitter. This is why Tony needs a security detail,” Gottlieb told Twitter at the time.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member and former FDA commissioner, was prominently featured in the media’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. (Chris Usher/CBS via Getty Images)
In reaction to the latest Twitter Files, Gottlieb issued his own thread suggesting the disclosed emails don’t tell the whole story.
“In the past, I’ve raised concerns with Twitter related to the safety of me and others, and threats being made on the platform. This included direct as well as specific threats. Sometimes it included statements that I believed were purposely false and inflammatory,” Gottlieb wrote Monday. “The selective disclosure of my private communications with Twitter stokes the threat environment. So does actions that empower people who’ve shown little restraint when it comes to purposeful vitriol. It instigates more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences.”
Gottlieb went on to share other emails he sent to Twitter flagging threatening tweets directed towards him and his family.
Alex Berenson, former New York Times writer and vocal COVID policy critic, was the latest to be tapped by Elon Musk to report on the “Twitter Files.” (Fox News)
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This marked the 13th installment of the Twitter Files, which began going viral last month shared by prominent independent journalists including Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shallenberger, Lee Fang and David Zweig.
Previous Twitter Files have covered a wide range of topics from the company’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, the internal pressure it faces to permanently ban former President Trump, efforts by the White House and government officials to suppress content, to the existence of shadow-banning of prominent conservatives.
The Twitter Files: Part 13 – Pfizer Secretly Pressed Twitter to Hide Posts Challenging the Company’s COVID Shots
Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb secretly pressed Twitter to hide posts challenging his company’s massively profitable Covid jabs
Growing distrust of mainstream media should be supplemented by scrutiny among users of Big Tech social media. They’re not an answer to the problem.
First, as Elon Musk continues to dump the files out the window at Twitter — to the dismay of the media elite that generally knew and approved of censorship of views other than their own, especially where COVID-19 or U.S. federal politics was concerned:
Twitter files 13: Handled by independent journalist Alex Berenson — once banned from Twitter for criticizing the government response to the pandemic: “Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb secretly pressed Twitter to hide posts challenging his company’s massively profitable Covid jabs /To funnel his demands, Gottlieb used the same Twitter lobbyist the White House did – fresh evidence of overlap between the company selling mRNA shots and the government forcing them on the public.”
Twitter Files 13: Pfizer’s Dr. Scott Gottlieb Lobbied for Censorship
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.”
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.
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?”
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.