Rand Paul Blasts YouTube over Censorship of Speech on Senate Floor

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has called out Google-owned YouTube after it blacklisted a clip of him speaking on the Senate floor, an act of censorship he calls “chilling and disturbing.” Google censored Paul because he read out the name of the alleged “whistleblower,” Eric Ciaramella.

Politico reported the story as “new,” even though Breitbart News first revealed that YouTube was blocking clips of the Senator mentioning Ciaramella’s name last week.

In a statement, Sen. Paul said:

It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure speech. Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people. This is dangerous and politically biased. Nowhere in my speech did I accuse anyone of being a whistleblower, nor do I know the whistleblower’s identity.

A spokeswoman for YouTube, Ivy Choi, defended the company’s censorship of Sen. Paul in a comment, describing Ciaramella as the whistleblower:

Videos, comments, and other forms of content that mention the leaked whistleblower’s name violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines and will be removed from YouTube. We’ve removed hundreds of videos and over ten thousand comments that contained the name. Video uploaders have the option to edit their videos to exclude the name and reupload.

As Breitbart News reported last week, Sen. Paul made his comments on the floor of the Senate after Chief Justice John Roberts refused to allow his question to be read during the impeachment trial. In his speech, Sen. Paul said:

Manager Schiff and Counsel for the President, are you aware that house intelligence committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella when at the National Security council together, and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House proceedings?

Explaining his argument further in a subsequent CNN segment, Sen. Paul said “I think it’s very important that we know if there was a concerted government plot to bring the president down by a lot of employees.”