Senator Roger Marshall launches investigation into Google after tech giant omits Trump assassination attempt from autocomplete

In the letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Marshall said that "Google’s failure to provide suggestions related to the assassination attempt against President Trump on July 13, 2024 as part of its search function is yet another example of censorship against conservative voices and violates the intent of Section 230."

Marshall stated that Google’s omission of "suggestions to the most obvious and recent victim of an assassination attempt shows a willful discrimination against President Trump and user of your search engine. Furthermore, Google’s decision to selectively erect hurdles to those seeking to obtain more information regarding one of the most important events in recent American history places you in the role of information arbiter, well beyond the scope of your firm’s purported purpose."

Marshall reminded Pichai that Google is advertised as a "search engine and aggregator, not a censor," and that if Google wished to be a publishing form or editor, "Congress could then regulate accordingly by removing the sacred Section 230 protections your firm has long used to silence conservative voices.

Google was accused of omitting the search term "assassination attempt on Trump," with suggested autocomplete search results coming up for assassination attempts of Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, the Pope, and Tucker Carlson, but not Trump.

Google had claimed that "no manual action" was taken to produce these results. Marshall wrote, "This clarification is woefully inadequate, disingenuous, and misleading. If the autocomplete function is truly reflective of the recent searches completed on Google, the self-learning algorithms should have easily adjusted their autocomplete function during a massive increase in search queries over the last two weeks."

Marshall said that he and his colleagues would be launching an investigation into the matter, and vowed to use "everything in my power" as a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee "to encourage fellow Committee members to force Google to testify under oath regarding these practices."

Among the questions Marshall demanded Pichai answer before August 9 were why the suggested search function would omit such an event, who oversees the algorithmic search function, what decisions were made at Google following the assassination attempt regarding search functions for said attempt, and whether Pichai could discuss "why you believe hiding violent search functions is better for the public discourse than offering up-to-date information."