How did the media know when the FBI was going to his house.
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant and former political advisor to President Donald Trump, appeared in federal court Friday on the heels of his indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Stone was arrested by a cadre of FBI agents at his Florida home before dawn Friday. He was reportedly then taken to the Broward County courthouse for an 11 a.m. hearing before Judge Lurana Snow.
Stone’s court appearance was set to begin just after his former associate and ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, another target of Mueller’s probe, appeared in U.S. court in Washington, D.C.
The appearance in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, came a day after Stone was indicted on seven criminal counts as part of Mueller’s ongoing investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
Before dawn Friday, Stone was arrested by a cadre of FBI agents at his Florida home. He was reportedly then taken to the Broward County courthouse for an 11 a.m. hearing before Judge Lurana Snow.
CNN Politics
✔@CNNPolitics
“FBI. Open the door.”
Watch exclusive CNN footage of the FBI arresting longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. Stone has been indicted by a grand jury on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. https://cnn.it/2FZxnjd
Trump, without mentioning Stone by name, vented rage against the special counsel in a tweet Friday morning after the court appearance was scheduled to begin.
“Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country!” Trump said.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?
Stone was charged with five counts of making false statements, one count of obstructing another probe of Russian interference conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, and one count of witness tampering.
The 24-page indictment alleges that Stone had contacted, and had been contacted by, an array of Trump campaign associates about leaking Democratic officials’ stolen information on the eve of the 2016 election to sway the contest against Hillary Clinton.
The organization that coordinated the document-dumping campaign is unnamed in the indictment but clearly refers to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks. That whistleblowing site dumped tranches of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign John Podesta that were allegedly hacked by Russian operatives.
Stone has repeatedly denied colluding with Russia. His lawyer, Grant Smith, told NBC News on Friday that if the special counsel had “found any collusion, they would have charged him with it.”
Manafort’s hearing relates to Mueller’s allegation that the Republican operative repeatedly lied in breach of his plea deal with the special counsel. Manafort had pleaded guilty to multiple crimes related to his work for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.
“This has nothing to do with the president,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Stone’s indictment Friday morning. “The president did nothing wrong. There was no collusion on his part.”
Trump’s counsel, Jay Sekulow, said: “The indictment today does not allege Russian collusion by Roger Stone or anyone else. Rather, the indictment focuses on alleged false statements Mr. Stone made to Congress.”
The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will allow President Donald Trump to temporarily enforce restrictions on transgender individuals serving in the military.
As is typical of orders of this nature, the Court gave no reason for its decision, though Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan noted their dissent.
The Trump administration first petitioned the Supreme Court to decide directly on the legality of the trans-soldiers ban, after federal trial judges in California, Washington, D.C., and Washington state issued orders prohibiting its enforcement. The plaintiffs in those lawsuits argue the policy violates a range of constitutional rights including the First Amendment, equal protection, and due process.
The government said the Court’s intervention was necessary because the lower court decision “require the military to maintain a policy that, in its own professional judgment, risks undermining readiness, disrupting unit cohesion, and weakening military effectiveness and lethality.”
Subsequent to that request, the Department of Justice filed a second petition proposing an alternative: in the event the Court denied the first request, the justices could allow enforcement of the ban while litigation continues in the lower courts. The Court granted that request Tuesday.
The case will now return to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for further proceedings. Should the administration lose before the 9th Circuit, they can return to the Supreme Court for a definitive ruling on the legality of its restrictions on transgender soldiers. (RELATED: Judiciary Committee Democrat Floats Perjury Probe Of Brett Kavanaugh)
Tuesday’s decision is a strong indicator that the government would prevail if the high court has to issue a final ruling in the dispute.
Another district court order from Maryland that was not before the Court prohibits the government from enforcing its restrictions on trans military personnel. Though that order remains in effect for the moment, it will likely terminate in the near future.
The president abruptly announced on Twitter that the military would not permit trans personnel to serve in the military. Thereafter, former Defense Secretary James Mattis convened a panel of military experts to conduct an independent review of the subject. Their findings served as the basis of Mattis’ February 2018 memo which implemented Trump’s request.
That memo provides that individuals with a history of gender dysphoria — a clinical term referring to anxiety triggered by the conflict between one’s biological sex and the gender with which they identify — may enlist provided they are willing to serve in their biological sex and have not suffered gender dysphoria for a continuous three-year period prior to recruitment. Active personnel who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria may continue to serve provided they do so in their biological sex.
Estimates vary as to the number of transgender individuals in the military: some studies place the figure between 1,000 and 6,000, while others suggest there are as many as 8,000.
OutServe-SLDN, a non-profit that provides legal services to LGBT soldiers, promised to continue fighting the administration’s restrictions.
“To our transgender siblings-in-arms, veterans, and hopeful recruits: This battle is not yet over. You will not be left behind or forgotten,” OutServe said in a tweet following Tuesday morning’s decision.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional delegation (CODEL) to Belgium, Egypt and Afghanistan garnered extra attention after President Donald Trump banned her from using military aircraft, but the trip would not have been the first time she used Air Force money to travel the world.
Pelosi’s trip to Italy and Ukraine from July 30 to Aug. 6, 2015, cost the Air Force $184,587.81, according to documents released Saturday under a 2015 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Judicial Watch. Her delegation was made up of nine other members of Congress, including Democratic Reps. Anna Eshoo of California and Marcia Fudge of Ohio.
Four family members, including Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi, were on the trip. The delegation dined at restaurants including James Beard American Restaurant in Milan, where a five-course meal cost up to $190, according to Fine Dining Lovers. The lawmakers also toured the Vatican and met up with Italian dignitaries, including President Sergio Mattarella and then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, according to their itinerary.
Pelosi’s team apparently had some pretty specific requests for the Air Force officials working with them to coordinate the trip. (RELATED: Trump Brings Pelosi’s Multimillion Dollar Vineyard Into Shutdown Fight)
“You’re going lo love this …. CODEL Pelosi is requesting the crew they had on this earlier attached trip. Apparently they were very pleased with their service. I already told the escort chances were slim,” an unidentified Air Force official wrote in an email July 9, 2015.
Overall, Pelosi’s European excursion cost the Air Force about the same amount of money it would take to send a student to Harvard University for four years. Judicial Watch compared the trip to Republican Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner’s CODEL trip with multiple stops in east Asia in August 2015. The trip led by Gardner, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cost at least $26,009.03 for commercial flights and per diems, according to records cited by Judicial Watch.
Judicial Watch has called out Pelosi for “abuse” of travel perks since 2009. The conservative watchdog group wrote in a statement Jan. 14, 2016:
Beginning in 2009, after the media failed to follow up on concerns raised about Nancy Pelosi’s use of luxury Air Force jets to travel between her congressional district and DC, Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information act requests exposed her abuse of this travel perk. Judicial Watch uncovered that Pelosi’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over one two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.
Pelosi blamed Trump after she canceled her congressional delegation (CODEL) to Afghanistan, reasoning that Trump’s public suggestion that she fly commercial had made the trip too high-profile and dangerous.
The speaker was planning to embark on a trip to Belgium, Egypt and Afghanistan Thursday when Trump essentially canceled it last-minute via letter.
“Due to the shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed. We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the shutdown is over,” Trump wrote. “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate.”
Trump’s letter came a day after Pelosi sent him a letter Wednesday seeking to delay his State of the Union address until after the shutdown ends. Trump’s address is scheduled for Jan. 29.
Many congressional Republicans have floated plans to allow Trump to bypass Pelosi’s invitation to deliver the address. Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested Trump bypass the House of Representatives entirely and deliver the speech from the Senate floor Thursday.
The Daily Caller News Foundation requested comment from Pelosi’s office but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
These so-called new networks will never stop lying.
CNN and MSNBC collectively used the word “impeach” nearly 200 times on Friday before the Special Counsel’s office disputed a bombshell report by BuzzFeed News.
According to a Daily Caller review of TV clipping service Grabien, personalities on CNN and MSNBC used the words “Impeach,” “Impeachment,” or “Impeachable,” 179 times.
The review included only original Friday programming and ran up until each network learned that BuzzFeed’s report was in dispute — shortly before 8 pm.
CNN mentioned impeachment 82 times while MSNBC mentioned it a whopping 97 times.
While some anchors and pundits hedged that the BuzzFeed story could only lead to impeachment proceedings “if true,” others repeated the story more uncritically and suggested that the president would be forced to resign and might even face obstruction of justice charges.
MSNBC’s Katy Tur, for example, stated at the top of her show that “Donald Trump is facing themost damming report to date forhis presidency.A story that could lead to hisimpeachment.”
Both outlets also interviewed a number of Democratic congresspeople to get their thoughts on the possibility of impeachment of the president. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, for example, spoke to Democratic Rep. Jim Himes about the implications of the BuzzFeed report if it turned out to be verified, while MSNBC host Chris Matthews brought on Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu.
Matthews was perhaps the most eager cable television host to prop up BuzzFeed’s report, even insisting after the Special Counsel’s office’s statement that, “not accurate … it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
BuzzFeed’s story, dependent on two anonymous sources, alleged that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was directed by President Donald Trump to lie about business deals in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.
A spokesperson for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team disputed the crux of the report within 24 hours of its publication, stating, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
Bob Mueller Office Says BuzzFeed Report Claiming Trump Directed Michael Cohen Testimony Is A Lie
A spokesperson for special counsel Robert Mueller’s office released a statement Friday disputing a BuzzFeed report alleging President Donald Trump directed his former attorney Michael Cohen to make false statements to Congress regarding a proposed real estate deal in Russia.
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” special counsel spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement.
BuzzFeed, citing two unidentified law enforcement officials, alleged in a Thursday evening report that President Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress and that he regularly briefed the president and his family on the Trump Tower project in Moscow. BuzzFeed claimed Cohen told Mueller that President Trump personally instructed him to lie about the timing of the project in order to obscure Trump’s involvement. No other news organization was able to confirm the report nearly 24 hours after it’s publication.
Further, BuzzFeed said Mueller’s investigators learned about President Trump’s directive “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.” The report says Cohen then acknowledged Trump’s instructions when he was interviewed by the Mueller team. “We are continuing to report and determine what the special counsel is disputing. We remain confident in the accuracy of our report,” Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, said in a statement on the special counsel’s dispute of its reportage.
The special counsel’s statement came hours after several prominent news organizations, including Breitbart News, expressed deep skepticism about the report. In a Friday morning opinion-editorial, Breitbart News’s John Nolte wrote that report’s co-author, Jason Leopold, has gotten in hot water for erroneous reporting. Columbia Journalism Review has described Leopold “serial fabulist,” who falsely claimed Karl Rove would be indicted for leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to the media. Further, Nolte also pointed out that President Trump is not an avid user of email or text messages — thus leaving little other means to corroborate BuzzFeed’s story. Speaking with CNN’s New Day Friday morning, Leopold’s co-author, Anthony Cormier, stood by the report, though he did admit he had “not personally” seen the underlying evidence.
Earlier Friday, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said “any suggestion — from any source — that the President counseled Michael Cohen to lie is categorically false.” In addition, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the allegation “absolutely ridiculous.”
The report comes as House Democrats have promised a thorough look into Trump’s ties to Russia, and as Mueller is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and contacts with the Trump campaign.
Giuliani noted that Cohen had pleaded guilty to lying and quoted federal prosecutors in New York who chastised him for a “pattern of lies and dishonesty over an extended period of time.” Mueller’s team, however, has called him a credible witness.
“Today’s claims are just more made-up lies born of Michael Cohen’s malice and desperation,” Giuliani said in a statement.
Lanny Davis, a Cohen adviser, declined to comment on the matter. Though Republicans stayed mostly silent, two Democrat committee chairmen in the House vowed to launch inquiries.
Reacting to the report, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) pledged to “do what’s necessary to find out” if the report was true. He said the allegation that President Trump directed Cohen to lie in his 2017 testimony “in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date.”
Adam Schiff
✔@RepAdamSchiff
The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.
BuzzFeed News
✔@BuzzFeedNews
BREAKING: President Trump personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in order to obscure his involvement. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …
Calling the allegations a “counterintelligence concern of the greatest magnitude,” Schiff said his committee had already been working to secure witness testimony and documents related to the Moscow deal. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a fellow House Intelligence Committee member demanded that the president resign or be impeachment, once again, contingent upon the report’s accuracy.
“If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached,” the lawmaker tweeted.
Joaquin Castro
✔@JoaquinCastrotx
If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached.
Some of President Trump’s closest allies and media boosters, including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., mocked BuzzFeed on social media over its now-dispute story:
Donald Trump Jr.
✔@DonaldJTrumpJr
BuzzFeed News
✔@BuzzFeedNews
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …
If the media does not spend — minute for minute — the same amount of time on the death of the latest #FakeNews from @BuzzFeed (RIP) that they did speculating about “IF IT’S TRUE !” then they should quit even pretending to be unbiased. What a disgrace. #RIPbuzzfeed
The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow said he turned down the chance to report parts of BuzzFeed’s report, citing a key source who repeatedly disputed the allegation that the president asked Cohen to lie before Congress.
Ronan Farrow
✔@RonanFarrow
I can’t speak to Buzzfeed’s sourcing, but, for what it’s worth, I declined to run with parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.
In November, Cohen stated in a guilty plea that he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he pursued on President Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 Republican campaign. He claimed he lied to be consistent with President Trump’s “political messaging.”
Cohen was sentenced December 12 to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to several charges, including campaign finance violations and making false statements to Congress. Prior to his sentencing, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan asked a judge to sentence Cohen to a “substantial term of imprisonment,” arguing that he had been motivated by “personal greed.”
Reacting to Cohen’s plea, President Trump called Cohen a “weak person” who was lying to get a lighter sentence and stressed that the real estate deal at issue was never a secret and never executed. Giuliani said that Cohen was a “proven liar” and that Trump’s business organization had voluntarily given Mueller the documents cited in the guilty plea “because there was nothing to hide.”
“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it,” the president said of pursuing the project. “I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”
Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7 about his work history with President Trump.
The Gay Mafia is upset because Rep. Gabbard believes in traditional marriage. Why can’t she believe this and the homosexuals just be tolerant? They want to force us to believe their vile life style. Join Our Video Platform Now: commonsensenation.net/videos/
Democratic presidential contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is under fire for her past activism and statements in favor of traditional marriage and against “homosexual activists.”
Gabbard, described by CNN as “the first Hindu and American Samoan” elected to Congress, made a surprise announcement Friday that she would be running for president in 2020.
She is a left-wing Democrat and Iraq War veteran with a history of iconoclastic stances. In 2016, she resigned from a leadership position on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to support Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), for president, and was one of the first to raise the alarm about then-chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s effort to tilt the Democratic Party presidential primary in favor of establishment favorite Hillary Clinton.
Just last week, Gabbard blasted Democrats in the Senate — including a fellow Hawaiian and fellow “progressives” — for questioning a judicial nominee’s Catholic faith, including his membership in the Knights of Columbus.
Now, however, Gabbard is facing similar accusations after a CNN report by researched Andrew Kaczynski that detailed her family’s past support for traditional marriage.
When Tulsi Gabbard first ran for office she touted her work to pass a measure allowing the Hawaii to ban same-sex marriage as the reason she should be elected.
The organization she worked for supported gay conversion therapy and ex-gay ministries. https://t.co/VxKBt1mQkH
On Twitter, Kaczynski opined that Gabbard’s anti-gay views were “next level.”
The report, “Tulsi Gabbard once touted working for anti-gay group that backed conversion therapy,” accuses her of “anti-gay” stances (original link):
Tulsi Gabbard herself is quoted in a 2000 press release from The Alliance for Traditional Marriage. In it, she attacks gay rights activists who were opposed to her mother Carol’s bid for the state’s board of education.
Tulsi Gabbard’s anti-gay efforts continued after she became a state representative.
Shortly after Gabbard announced her presidential ambitions Friday, her testimony at a hearing opposing a civil unions bill in 2004 resurfaced.
“To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii,” Gabbard said at the time. “As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”
Gabbard has since changed her views and apologized for her past statements in 2012, according to the New Yorker.
The left-wing media seized on the story. “Tulsi Gabbard’s Homophobic Remarks Surface After 2020 Presidential Announcement,” ran a headline at HuffPost. On social media, writer Mark Harris declared Gabbard a “flat no.”
told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.”
The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg.
The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.
In the leaked discussion thread, a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source.
“We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”
Others were more concerned about the presence of the blacklist. According to the source, the software engineer who started the discussion called the manipulation of search results related to abortion a “smoking gun.”
The software engineer noted that the change had occurred following an inquiry from a left-wing Slate journalist about the prominence of pro-life videos on YouTube, and that pro-life videos were replaced with pro-abortion videos in the top ten results for the search terms following Google’s manual intervention.
“The Slate writer said she had complained last Friday and then saw different search results before YouTube responded to her on Monday,” wrote the employee. “And lo and behold, the [changelog] was submitted on Friday, December 14 at 3:17 PM.”
The manually downranked items included several videos from Dr. Antony Levatino, a former abortion doctor who is now a pro-life activist. Another video in the top ten featured a woman’s personal story of being pressured to have an abortion, while another featured pro-life conservative Ben Shapiro. The Slate journalist who complained to Google reportedthat these videos previously featured in the top ten, describing them in her story as “dangerous misinformation.”
Since the Slate journalist’s inquiry and Google’s subsequent intervention, the top search results now feature pro-abortion content from left-wing sources like BuzzFeed, Vice, CNN, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. In her report, the Slate journalist acknowledged that the search results changed shortly after she contacted Google.
The manual adjustment of search results by a Google-owned platform contradicts a key claim made under oath by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in his congressional testimony earlier this month: that his company does not “manually intervene on any search result.”
A Google employee in the discussion thread drew attention to Pichai’s claim, noting that it “seems like we are pretty eager to cater our search results to the social and political agenda of left-wing journalists.”
One of the posts in the discussion also noted that the blacklist had previously been edited to include the search term “Maxine Waters” after a single Google employee complained the top YouTube search result for Maxine Waters was “very low quality.”
Google’s alleged intervention on behalf of a Democratic congresswoman would be further evidence of the tech giant using its resources to prop up the left. Breitbart News previously reported on leaked emails revealing the company targeted pro-Democrat demographics in its get-out-the-vote efforts in 2016.
According to the source, a software engineer in the thread also noted that “a bunch of terms related to the abortion referendum in Ireland” had been added to the blacklist – another change with potentially dramatic consequences on the national policies of a western democracy.
youtube_controversial_query_blacklist
At least one post in the discussion thread revealed the existence of a file called “youtube_controversial_query_blacklist,” which contains a list of YouTube search terms that Google manually curates. In addition to the terms “abortion,” “abortions,” “Maxine Waters,” and search terms related to the Irish abortion referendum, a Google software engineer noted that the blacklist includes search terms related to terrorist attacks. (the posts specifically mentions that the “Strasbourg terrorist attack” as being on the list).
“If you look at the other entries recently added to the youtube_controversial_query_blacklist(e.g., entries related to the Strasbourg terrorist attack), the addition of abortion seems…out-of-place,” wrote the software engineer, according to the source.
After learning of the existence of the blacklist, Breitbart News obtained a partial screenshot of the full blacklist file from a source within Google. It reveals that the blacklist includes search terms related to both mass shootings and the progressive anti-second amendment activist David Hogg.
Responding to a request for comment, a YouTube spokeswoman said the company wants to promote “authoritative” sources in its search results, but maintained that YouTube is a “platform for free speech” that “allow[s]” both pro-life and pro-abortion content.
YouTube’s full comment:
YouTube is a platform for free speech where anyone can choose to post videos, as long as they follow our Community Guidelines, which prohibit things like inciting violence and pornography. We apply these policies impartially and we allow both pro-life and pro-choice opinions. Over the last year we’ve described how we are working to better surface news sourcesacross our site for news-related searches and topical information. We’ve improved our search and discovery algorithms, built new features that clearly label and prominently surface news sources on our homepage and search pages, and introduced information panels to help give users more authoritative sources where they can fact check information for themselves.
In the case of the “abortion” search results, YouTube’s intervention to insert “authoritative” content resulted in the downranking of pro-life videos and the elevation of pro-abortion ones.
A Google spokesperson took a tougher line than its YouTube subsidiary, stating that “Google has never manipulated or modified the search results or content in any of its products to promote a particular political ideology.”
However, in the leaked discussion thread, a member of Google’s “trust & safety” team, Daniel Aaronson, admitted that the company maintains “huge teams” that work to adjust search results for subjects that are “prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content” – all subjective terms that are frequently used to suppress right-leaning sources.
He also admitted that the interventions weren’t confined to YouTube – they included search results delivered via Google Assistant, Google Home, and in rare cases Google ’s organic search results.
In the thread, Aaronson attempted to explain how search blacklisting worked. He claimed that highly specific searches would generate non-blacklisted results, even controversial ones. But the inclusion of highly specific terms in the YouTube blacklist, like “David Hogg cant remember his lines” – the name of an actual viral video – seems to contradict this.
Aaronson’s full post is copied below:
I work in Trust and Safety and while I have no particular input as to exactly what’s happening for YT I can try to explain why you’d have this kind of list and why people are finding lists like these on Code Search.
When dealing with abuse/controversial content on various mediums you have several levers to deal with problems. Two prominent levers are “Proactive” and “Reactive”:
Proactive: Usually refers to some type of algorithm/scalable solution to a general problem
E.g.: We don’t allow straight up porn on YouTube so we create a classifier that detects porn and automatically remove or flag for review the videos the porn classifier is most certain of
Reactive: Usually refers to a manual fix to something that has been brought to our attention that our proactive solutions don’t/didn’t work on and something that is clearly in the realm of bad enough to warrant a quick targeted solution (determined by pages and pages of policies worked on over many years and many teams to be fair and cover necessary scope)
E,g.: A website that used to be a good blog had it’s domain expire and was purchased/repurposed to spam Search results with autogenerated pages full of gibberish text, scraped images, and links to boost traffic to other spammy sites. It is manually actioned for violating policy
Manually reacting to things is not very scalable, and is not an ideal solution to most problems, so the proactive lever is really the one we all like to lean on. Ideally, our classifiers/algorithm are good at providing useful and rich results to our users while ignoring things at are not useful or not relevant. But we all know, this isn’t exactly the case all the time (especially on YouTube).
From a user perspective, there are subjects that are prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content. Now, these words are highly subjective and no one denies that. But we can all agree generally, lines exist in many cultures about what is clearly okay vs. what is not okay. E.g. a video of a puppy playing with a toy is probably okay in almost every culture or context, even if it’s not relevant to the query. But a video of someone committing suicide and begging others to follow in his/her footsteps is probably on the other side of the line for many folks.
While my second example is technically relevant to the generic query of “suicide”, that doesn’t mean that this is a very useful or good video to promote on the top of results for that query. So imagine a classifier that says, for any queries on a particular text file, let’s pull videos using signals that we historically understand to be strong indicators of quality (I won’t go into specifics here, but those signals do exist). We’re not manually curating these results, we’re just saying “hey, be extra careful with results for this query because many times really bad stuff can appear and lead to a bad experience for most users”. Ideally the proactive lever did this for us, but in extreme cases where we need to act quickly on something that is so obviously not okay, the reactive/manual approach is sometimes necessary. And also keep in mind, that this is different for every product. The bar for changing classifiers or manual actions on span in organic search is extremely high. However, the bar for things we let our Google Assistant say out loud might be a lot lower. If I search for “Jews run the banks” – I’ll likely find anti-semitic stuff in organic search. As a Jew, I might find some of these results offensive, but they are there for people to research and view, and I understand that this is not a reflection of Google feels about this issue. But if I ask Google assistant “Why do Jews run the banks” we wouldn’t be similarly accepting if it repeated and promoted conspiracy theories that likely pop up in organic search in her smoothing voice.
Whether we agree or not, user perception of our responses, results, and answers of different products and mediums can change. And I think many people are used to the fact that organic search is a place where content should be accessible no matter how offensive it might be, however, the expectation is very different on a Google Home, a Knowledge Panel, or even YouTube.
These lines are very difficult and can be very blurry, we are all well aware of this. So we’ve got huge teams that stay cognizant of these facts when we’re crafting policies considering classifier changes, or reacting with manual actions – these decisions are not made in a vacuum, but admittedly are also not made in a highly public forum like TGIF or IndustryInfo (as you can imagine, decisions/agreement would be hard to get in such a wide list – image if all your CL’s were reviewed by every engineer across Google all the time). I hope that answers some questions and gives a better layer of transparency without going into details about our “Pepsi formula”.
Best,
Daniel
The fact that Google manually curates politically contentious search results fits in with a wider pattern of political activity on the part of the tech giant.
Breitbart also leaked “The Good Censor,” an internal research document from Google that admits the tech giant is engaged in the censorship of its own products, partly in response to political events.
Yet another showed Google engaged in targeted turnout operations aimed to boost voter participation in pro-Democrat demographics in “key states” ahead of the 2016 election. The effort was dubbed a “silent donation” by a top Google employee.
Evidence for Google’s partisan activities is now overwhelming. President Trump has previously warned Google, as well as other Silicon Valley giants, not to engage in censorship or partisan activities. Google continues to defy him.
CNN Politics
Donald J. Trump
!” then they should quit even pretending to be unbiased. What a disgrace. 
