The ranking member on a House committee investigating Big Tech power thanked a leading conservative organization for opting not to accept donations from tech giants.
In a letter obtained by Breitbart News, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) thanked the Heritage Foundation after it turned down “six-figure donations from Google and Facebook last year.”
Buck’s letter, dated March 29, continued:
Your principled decision to decline large donations is an important statement considering the corrupt political and financial power that Silicon Valley giants attempt to employ in Washington, D.C. Your letters to Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai explaining the decision to decline their donations show the strong ethical and moral beliefs that Heritage was founded upon and continues to embody. …
While Washington, D.C. has become increasingly swayed by Big Tech, your actions show that conservatives will not stand idly by and accept Big Tech manipulation of the marketplace as inevitable.
Buck, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, announced last week he would no longer accept donations from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Amazon–companies accused of stifling the speech and views of conservatives.
“As the lead Republican on the antitrust subcommittee working to hold Big Tech accountable for their anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior, I cannot continue to accept campaign donations from Facebook, Google, or Amazon,” Buck said in a statement.
“Starting today, I will no longer accept any money from these companies.”
In 2020, Alphabet Inc. donated $5,000 to Buck’s campaign, making it his 17th largest donor, Open Secrets reported. Amazon contributed $2,500.
In 2018, Google was #48 in Buck’s Top 100 donors with $2,000 while Amazon gave $1,000. Microsoft was his top tech donor at $5,000, according to Open Secrets.
In February, Buck joined several other House Republicans to tell Facebook its “de-platforming and content moderation standards are not applied in a fair and neutral manner.”
“Instances where conservative viewpoints have been censored, blocked, or diminished harm the free exchange of ideas and irreparably damage conservative Americans’ faith in the fundamental fairness of purportedly neutral actors like Facebook,” they wrote.
“To effectively enforce content moderation rules in the public domain, Facebook must act in an impartial manner or risk delegitimizing its efforts to prevent violence and hate.”
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.