State AG accuses Google of censorship

A Missouri attorney general claims the tech giant has been “waging war on the democratic process” using its search service

Google is to be investigated for allegedly manipulating its search engine to undermine the democratic process in America, the Attorney General of the state of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, declared on Thursday.

In a post on X, the Republican politician accused the company of “censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation’s history” and, in doing so, of “waging war on the democratic process.”

In an additional statement to Fox News, Bailey said he suspected that Google is deemphasizing information in its search results about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Conservative figures in the US have accused Big Tech of censoring their speech for years. Former President Trump mused earlier this month that he would push for a prosecution of Google if elected for a second term in office, for allegedly favoring the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Missouri previously joined forces with Louisiana, another conservative state, to sue the Biden administration over purported violations of the First Amendment in suppressing what his administration labeled as misinformation about Covid-19.

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The plaintiffs cited the federal government’s communications with large tech companies during the pandemic and claimed that these amounted to illegal coercion and government censorship of speech. They sought an injunction against similar actions in the future. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which rejected it in June in a 6-3 ruling.

Bailey also shared video footage on Thursday from his appearance at a conservative event earlier this month, in which he discussed the case and his intention to follow up on it, and to use the court discovery process to “root out the vast censorship enterprise.”

“Who empowered the government to tell us what is and isn’t true?” he asked. “The remedy for disfavored speech has always been counter-speech, not government censorship.”

The state official argued that the use of the Covid-19 emergency to sneak through online censorship was a trial run and that suppression of other speech disliked by Washington and Silicon Valley, such as Christian preachings, may come after it.

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A Google spokesperson told Reuters that Bailey’s accusations are “totally false.”

“Search serves all our users, and our business rests on showing useful information to everyone – no matter what their political beliefs are,” the statement said.