Google CEO Sundar Pichai has refused to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in September.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai refused to testify at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, which is set to include Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and the company instead offered to send Senior Vice President for Global Affairs, Kent Walker, who was dismissed as not being “sufficiently high up in the company,” according to Fortune.
Despite this, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) claimed he will not subpoena Pichai, declaring, “I don’t normally subpoena people to be part of the solution… Google chooses not to participate and being part of the solution. That’s a decision they made.”
Pichai was criticized by both Republican and Democrat senators for refusing to testify, with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) calling the move a “great mistake.”
“This is the United States Senate, this is an important issue, and we deserve to hear from the decision-makers, not the people who carry out the decisions,” added Sen. Angus King (I-ME).
The Senate hearing may have included tough questions for Pichai about his company’s decision not to work with the Pentagon on drone technology, but still create a censored search app to please the Chinese government.
This week, President Trump warned Google, along with other Big Tech companies.
“I think what Google and what others are doing – if you look at what is going on with Twitter and if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful because you can’t do that to people… You can’t do it,” expressed President Trump, adding that they face the “serious charge” of mass-coordinated censorship and political manipulation.
“I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful,” he continued. “It is not fair to large portions of the population.”
Trump also criticized Google Search’s overwhelmingly biased news results, which prioritized content from CNN and excluded major conservative news outlets.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.