Google-owned YouTube removed undercover journalism outlet Project Veritas’s latest undercover video on Pfizer and COVID-19. But the video doesn’t appear to have violated any policies. 

Project Veritas released a video that allegedly showed Pfizer’s Director of Research and Development claiming the company is considering mutating COVID-19 to “preemptively develop new vaccines.” YouTube mysteriously removed the video citing its COVID-19 medical misinformation policy. The platform also suspended Project Veritas’s account for a week preventing the organization from uploading, posting or live-streaming content. YouTube, however, neglected to specify what part of the policy the Project Veritas video violated. 

“Here we go again,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “Just like Twitter and Facebook censored the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story and Google erased the campaign websites of Republican senate candidates, YouTube has suspended Project Veritas’s account because YouTube doesn’t like what James O’Keefe discovered. YouTube does not want Americans to know what Project Veritas now knows.”  

Screenshots indicate that YouTube told Project Veritas it removed the video “[t]o help keep the community safe,” but it's unclear what would make the video “unsafe” for viewers. The platform’s medical misinformation policy includes a bullet point laundry list of 60 claims YouTube will remove if included in a video. But it’s unclear which, if any, of the bulleted items the Project Veritas video violated.YouTube did not respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment at the time of publishing.

UPDATE: Project Veritas shared a purported screenshot of an "'Urgent Guidance' document sent to employees on how to handle the [sic] Project Veritas." The document shows YouTube removed the video because of something Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe said in his narration: "COVID vaccines are ineffective against virus variants," he said. It is still unclear why that statement would have violated YouTube's "COVID-19 medical misinformation policy" which it revised in August. The new policy removed a section that prohibited "Claims that COVID-19 vaccines are not effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19.”