A leading Republican in the House of Representatives on Sunday called for an extortion investigation against big tech companies that over the weekend acted against Parler, a social media site.
“This is clearly a violation of antitrust, civil rights, the RICO statute. There must be an extortion investigation on all the people who coordinated this attack not just on a company, but on all those like us, like me, like you, Maria, ”Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), ranking on the House Intelligence Committee, said Maria Bartiromo, Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures presenter.
After Twitter banned President Donald Trump and a few other users, Parler saw his traffic explode. Soon, however, Google announced that it had removed Parler from its online store, a move followed by Apple. Then Amazon announced that it was suspending Parler from its web hosting services.
Parler CEO John Matze told the Epoch Times that his company is prepared to take legal action, but in the meantime the authorities must investigate the possibly coordinated actions, Nunes argued.
“The effect of this is that there is no longer an open and free social media company for any American,” he said, because Amazon, Google and Apple “just destroyed” Parler.
“It is absurd. So I don’t know where the hell the Justice Department or the FBI is, ”he added.
Nunes also said that company CEOs should be prosecuted criminally. He also said that he has been talking to other members of Congress and that they are exploring their legal options. And he also asked the Federal Supreme Court and federal judges to intervene.
The Justice Department, Apple, Google and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.