Trump threatens to prosecute Google over search results

Former President Trump on Friday threatened to prosecute Google if elected in November, alleging the search engine was “only” showing “bad” stories about him and “good” articles about Vice President Harris. 

“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 wrote in a post on Truth Social. 

“This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections,” he continued. “If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!” 

While the former president did not specify what led to the post, he appears to be referring to a report released earlier this week by Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group. 

In the report, Media Research Center alleged that Google “pads its search results about political candidates with leftist legacy news articles,” pointing to stories from outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN that appeared above both candidates’ campaign websites. 

In response to a request for comment on Trump’s post, Google pointed The Hill to its previous statement about the Media Research Center report. 

“Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,” a Google spokesperson said. “This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”