Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, revealed on Tuesday additional information regarding a probe over what some Republicans are claiming to be government-led censorship of former President Donald Trump's attempted assassination in mid-July.
Concretely, Jordan released a letter sent to Alphabet (the parent company of Google) CEO Sundar Pichai, in which he requested him to provide information on "how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor lawful speech."
The document claims that committee members have obtained documents "showing how social media companies engaged with the Executive Branch to censor true information about the Biden family's corruption in advance of the 2020 elections," and now say there are similar attempts regarding the attempted assassination in Pennsylvania.
According to Jordan's letter, Alphabet "admitted to the Committee and Select Subcommittee that after the July 13 assassination attempt on President Trump, 'predictions for queries about the assassination attempt against former President Trump' 'should have appeared but didn't.'"
Pichai said this was a result of Google Search's Autocomplete's built-in protections around political violence being "out of date." This, he added, resulted in Google not providing relevant results about the event. The company says it updated the protections after the issues were flagged
However, the letter is staying on top of the issue, sending additional questions to Pichai, including how and when the issue was flagged, the fixing process and whether there was any communication with the government regarding the issue. It also asks ten further questions about Alphabet's claim that "a bug" failed to show former President Trump's name in autocomplete after searches for "President Donald" and similar terms, and about searches for stories related to Trump yielding results about articles related to Kamala Harris.
The inquiry comes as Jordan is also seeking documents from dozens of major companies in the U.S. over activities related to a probe over alleged corporate collusion to defund news outlets and social media platforms.
The lawmaker sent last Thursday a letter to over 40 companies, including Adidas, McDonalds, Goldman Sachs and Redbull, saying it has learned that "collusive activity is occurring within the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), of which your company is a member."
The letter goes on to say that GARM and its member companies have engaged in "coordinated action" including "boycotts of disfavored social media platforms, podcasts and news outlets."
It names The Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily Wire, Breitbard News, Fox News "or other conservative media" as examples of outlets that were targeted by these "coordinated actions," and asks the companies whether they were aware of and support them.
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