Trump threatens to prosecute Google if he wins back the presidency

Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump says that if he wins the presidential election this November and returns to the White House, he will have the Justice Department prosecute Google. Why? Because Trump swears that Google is showing only negative stories about him while showing only positive stories about his challenger Vice President Kamala Harris. Specifically, Trump says that the Alphabet unit is interfering with the upcoming election.

In a post on his TruthSocial platform written Friday afternoon, Trump wrote, "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." The former president called Google's actions "illegal" and stated that if he has the power and the Justice Department doesn't do anything to get Google in legal jeopardy, he will do it himself.

Trump's "Truth" continued. "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, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!"

Right now the DOJ and Google are facing off in court over a completely different matter. The Justice Department accuses Google of violating antitrust laws with its advertising business and an adverse decision by the judge could lead the DOJ to demand that Google parent Alphabet break up Google into smaller independent companies.

You might recall that back in 2018 when he was in the White House, Trump accused Google of rigging search results so that stories critical of him would dominate the search results. At the time, Trump tweeted that 96% of the results from a search for Trump stories came from what he called the "national left-wing media." When we tried to replicate the results that Trump claimed he received, we could not do it.

The Trump administration did take the president's claims very seriously at the time; after Trump's tirade back in 2018, White House economic advisor Lawrence Kudlow said that the administration would look into regulating Google Search. Despite the comment from Kudlow, nothing of the sort was ever discussed any further by the administration. Google also responded to Trump's claims by explaining that Google Search does not set a political agenda.

Considering that the former president seems focused on retribution, should he win back the presidency, we would not be surprised if he decides to use the DOJ to seek revenge on the Alphabet unit.