US President Trump accuses Google of 'very illegal' action, offers no evidence

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday stepped up his accusations against Google, claiming without offering evidence that the technology company worked to subvert his 2016 presidential campaign and warning he was watching it “very closely” ahead of the 2020 election. Trump, in a series of early posts on Twitter, also slammed Google’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, and again raised questions about the search engine’s work with China, despite his administration’s earlier comments that any such work was limited. [caption id=“attachment_7007721” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”]  US President Donald Trump[/caption] “We go to great lengths to build our products and enforce our policies in ways that don’t take political leanings into account,” a Google spokesperson said in email statement. Trump, who is seeking re-election in 2020, has repeatedly slammed Google and a host of other technology companies, echoing conservative critics’ claims of unfair treatment and raising the specter of regulation.

.@sundarpichai of Google was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China’s military, that they didn’t help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, & that they...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2019

... are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary. It all sounded good until I watched Kevin Cernekee, a Google engineer, say terrible things about what they did in 2016 and that they want to “Make sure that Trump losses...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2019

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...in 2020.” Lou Dobbs stated that this is a fraud on the American public. @peterschweizer stated with certainty that they suppressed negative stories on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Trump. All very illegal. We are watching Google very closely!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2019

Lawmakers have also raised the possibility of regulating the industry, in part over security and misinformation concerns following the 2016 election, and findings of Russian interference in that vote that relied heavily on leveraging technology and social media. Trump on Tuesday accused Google of “very illegal” acts but offered no evidence, and no formal charges have been announced. “Distorting results for political purposes would harm our business and go against our mission of providing helpful content to all of our users,” the spokesperson added. [caption id=“attachment_6082921” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  With the new investment Google will now be in 24 out of the 50 states in the US. Image: Google[/caption] Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what steps the administration was taking toward the company. Trump and Google’s Pichai had met at the White House last month. Following the meeting, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said they both had been assured that any of Google’s work with China was “very, very limited.” Days later, Trump warned Google with a post on Twitter.