The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Rep. James Comer, is to launch an investigation into Google and Meta over the “potential censorship” of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Several Republicans pointed out following the July assassination attempt that Google’s search was not showing autocomplete results for the incident, which Newsweek was also able to confirm.
“Americans rely upon prominent internet search engines such as Google to gather news and information critical to their understanding of national politics and events—and never more so than during a Presidential election season,” wrote Comer in a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
“On behalf of the American people, the Committee is dedicated to fully understanding when and how information is being suppressed or modified, whether it be due to technical error, a policy intended to ensure safety, or a specific intent to mislead,” he continued.
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“Google users report that autocompleted search prompts related to the assassination attempt of President Trump produced results for failed assassination attempts of former Presidents, including Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan—or even assassinations of historical figures such as Archduke Franz Ferdinand—but omitted from the list of automatically generated search suggestions the recent attempt on President Trump’s life.
“The Committee now writes to request certain documents and information to assist its investigation of this matter to better understand how Google designs its Search product and Autocomplete feature.”
A Google spokesperson previously denied that any “manual action” was taken on autocomplete predictions surrounding last month’s assassination attempt.
The tech giant’s systems reportedly had protections against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were “working as intended” prior to the attempt on the former president’s life.
“We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date,” the spokesperson told Newsweek at the time.
Meta was at the center of two issues related to July’s assassination attempt. The first was an image of Trump moments after the shots were fired, which Meta said in a blog post had been incorrectly applied with a fact-check label.
The second concerned Meta AI, which in some cases asserted that the event did not happen. Meta said this was due to “hallucinations” – responses sometimes generated by artificial intelligence which contain false information presented as fact.
Newsweek has contacted Meta and Google for comment via email.
Minutes into a speech at a July 13 Pennsylvania rally, loud popping noises were heard as Trump appeared to clutch his ear and fall to the ground. When he stood back up, surrounded by Secret Service agents, blood ran down the side of the former president’s face and he was led off stage.
Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer fire chief, was fatally shot at the rally. Reports indicate he was shielding his daughter from the gunfire.
The would-be assassin, who was shot dead by the Secret Service, has since been identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
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