Donald Trump threatened on Friday to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, claiming the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris.
The complaint – the latest threat on the campaign trail from Trump to wield the power of the presidency in response to enemies real or perceived – came in an abrupt post on Truth Social.
“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said in the post.
“This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections. If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, when I win the Election and become President of the United States.”
Trump did not address the possibility that there have been more negative stories about his campaign than Harris’s in recent weeks, and what prompted him to lash out at Google was not immediately clear.
Google has said it does not manipulate search results to benefit a particular party. “Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,” the company said in a statement.
Still, conservatives have long complained that Google’s search results unfairly favor Democrats. The rightwing Media Research Center, which bills itself as a media watchdog for conservatives, has previously issued reports claiming Google helped Democrats.
The Trump campaign has also bitterly complained about the Harris campaign using the “sponsored” feature on Google search results to promote positive news coverage from outlets, including the Guardian, but with headlines rewritten by the campaign to favor Harris.
Trump’s post about the Google search results was the latest instance of him vowing to prosecute supposed opponents.
This month, Trump threatened in another Truth Social post to pursue criminal charges against any lawyers, donors, political operatives and a range of other people who he believes engaged in supposed election fraud against him if he wins the presidential election in November.
At a news conference on Thursday, Trump said former House speaker Nancy Pelosi should face criminal prosecution for not preventing the January 6 Capitol attack, which was caused by his own supporters rioting to stop the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.
And at a campaign rally in Michigan on Friday, Trump called for an attorney general “in a Republican territory” to investigate Pelosi and her husband over reports that they had sold Visa stock before the justice department brought an antitrust lawsuit against the credit-card company.