The latest Big Tech corruption scandal is related to the recent assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump—but that might not be very surprising.
Last week, GOP Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who serves as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Google’s parent company, Alphabet. He asked the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, about a number of concerns related to the apparent censorship of Google search results related to Trump’s near assassination.
On July 13, the presidential candidate had barely taken the stage for a Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally when Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old, opened fire at him, striking him in the ear with a bullet that narrowly missed killing Trump by going through his brain. Two men attending the rally were seriously injured and another tragically died after being struck by additional bullets.
The incident, of course, immediately started trending on social media and search engines. But Google reportedly censored the results, therefore impeding what information was available to the public. In his letter to Pichai, Jordan accused Big Tech—including Alphabet and Google—of having been involved with the federal government to be “coerced” into censoring online content.
He added that the most recent suspicions of such activity are related to Google’s alleged censorship of the assassination attempt and Trump’s re-election campaign, which he said constitutes as “interfering” with the upcoming election slated for November 5. The former GOP commander-in-chief is set to take on Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced President Joe Biden on the ticket weeks ago.
Jordan’s letter noted that Alphabet’s legal team had shared “non-public information” related to the “search and autocomplete” problems withing Google as well as the team’s “efforts to correct them.” These details were shared in a private briefing.
This meeting revealed that the lack of web results for searches related to “predictions for queries” about the July 13 shooting had been admitted by Google’s counsel. This problem in particular was pinned on “out of date” protection related to political violence. The company also claimed that “a bug” caused the failure to have Trump’s name filled in search bars with autocomplete.
