The Post & Email by Dr. Joseph Mercola public domain 11/8/2021
In early September 2021, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter1 to Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com, demanding an “immediate review” of Amazon’s algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation,” stressing that Amazon’s sale of such books was “potentially unlawful.”2,3,4
Warren specifically singled out my book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” co-written with Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), as a prime example of “highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures” that she wanted banned.
“Dr. Mercola has been described as ‘the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,” Warren wrote,5 adding: “Not only was this book the top result when searching either ‘COVID-19’ or ‘vaccine’ in the categories of ‘All Departments’ and ‘Books’; it was tagged as a ‘Best Seller’ by Amazon and the ‘#1 Best Seller’ in the ‘Political Freedom’ category.
The book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about COVID-19 and false and misleading information about vaccines. It asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D and quercetin … can prevent COVID-19 infection … And the book contends that vaccines cannot be trusted …”
Warren Fancies Herself Above the LawWarren should know that as a government official, it is illegal for her to violate the U.S. Constitution, and pressuring private businesses to do it for her is not a legal workaround.
Since she willfully ignores the law, Cummins and I, along with our publisher, Chelsea Green Publishing, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who wrote our foreword, are suing Warren, both in her official and personal capacities, for violating our First Amendment rights. The federal lawsuit, in which Warren is listed as the sole defendant, was filed in the state of Washington. As noted in our complaint:
“Once upon a time, the First Amendment was understood to guarantee that books challenging governmental orthodoxy could be sold without fear of governmental intimidation or reprisal.
Almost sixty years ago, in Bantam Books v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963), the Supreme Court held that state officials violated the First Amendment by sending letters to booksellers warning that the sale of certain named books was potentially unlawful.
The ‘vice’ in such letters and in the ‘veiled threat’ of legal repercussions they communicated, explained the Court, is that they allow government to achieve censorship while doing an end-run around the judiciary, ‘provid[ing] no safeguards whatever against the suppression of … constitutionally protected’ speech, thus effecting an unconstitutional ‘prior restraint.’
It made no difference that the officials who sent the letter lacked the ‘power to apply formal legal sanctions’ — i.e., that the officials did not themselves have the power to sanction or prosecute the booksellers in any way. Indeed this fact made the unconstitutionality more apparent.
The officials ‘are not law enforcement officers; they do not pretend that they are qualified to give or that they attempt to give distributors only fair legal advice … [T]hey acted … not to advise but to suppress.’
It also made no difference, the Court expressly found, that the letters were framed as mere ‘exhort[ation]’ or that the booksellers were in theory ‘free’ to ignore the letters, because the officials had ‘deliberately set about to achieve the suppression of publications deemed ‘objectionable’,’ and ‘people do not lightly disregard public officers’ veiled threats.’
Today, certain members of the United States Congress have apparently forgotten, or think they are above, the law set forth in Bantam Books.”Warren’s Attack on Constitutionally Protected SpeechThere’s no doubt our book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” is constitutionally protected speech, and that Warren’s letter is calling on Amazon to suppress protected speech.
More:
https://www.thepostemail.com/2021/11/08/dr-mercola-files-lawsuit-against-us-sen-elizabeth-warren/
