EXCLUSIVE - U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said he will launch an investigation into Google after a key feature on the search engine's website omitted results for users looking for information on the failed assassination of former President Trump over the weekend.
In a letter dated Wednesday to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Marshall scolded the tech giant, saying the omitting of suggestions related to the July 13 shooting of Trump was the latest "example of censorship against conservative voices" and showed "willful discrimination against President Trump and users of your search engine."
Marshall, who sits on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, called on Pichai to testify before lawmakers on the matter. Conservatives have long accused Big Tech of trying to influence elections and silencing conservative viewpoints.
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"Google, the largest Search Engine Operator in the world, has become a propaganda wing of the Biden-Harris Administration and the radical Left," Marshall said in a statement.
"We’ve known Big Tech has propped up the Biden Crime Family, and the Clintons and is now doing Kamala Harris’ bidding, but this week, they have shown there truly is no low they won’t go to, including censoring the assassination attempt of President Trump," he added. "This is election interference- there must be accountability."
Over the weekend, Google users were miffed when the website's autocomplete feature omitted the results of the failed assassination attempt.
Instead, recommended search results ranged from the failed assassination of Ronald Reagan and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, whose death sparked World War I, to the shooting of Bob Marley and the failed attempt on former President Ford.
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At the time, Google said: "Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring. We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date."
"Over the weekend, Google claimed that "no manual action" was taken to effectuate these results," Marshall said. "However, this clarification is woefully inadequate, disingenuous, and misleading. If the autocomplete function is truly reflective of the recent searches completed on Google, the selflearning algorithms should have easily adjusted their autocomplete function during a massive increase in search queries over the last two weeks."
On Wednesday, Elon Musk said a Google search for "Trump rally" instead brought up top results of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Marshall is demanding that Google answer for the suppression of search terms related to the shooting of Trump.
Specifically, he asked why did Google’s search suggestion function create automated entries for "assassination attempt on President Truman" but not the "assassination attempt on President Trump" and why hiding violent search results is better for public discourse than giving users up-to-date information.
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FOX Business has reached out to Google.
