On Thursday, the House Oversight Committee called an FBI investigation into Parler’s involvement in the deadly attack on the Capitol this month.
In a letter sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray, House Supervisory President Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) asked the bureau to “conduct a rigorous examination of the role that the social media site Parler played” in the pro-attack. Trump on January 6 the capital. Maloney said the committee plans to open its own investigation and has requested a meeting with FBI officials about the status and scope of any future investigation on the social media platform.
Household supervision chair @RepMaloney writes a letter asking FBI director Christopher Wray to “conduct a rigorous examination of the role that the social media site Parler played in the attack” on January 6. pic.twitter.com/05OODsFeEH
– Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 21, 2021
In an interview with O Washington Post, Maloney said: “I will find out who owns and who funds social media platforms like Parler, which tolerate and create violence.”
In November, Wall Street Newspaper reported that Parler receives financial support from conservative hedge fund investor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. Mercers are known for financially supporting causes and conservative organizations like the now defunct Cambridge Analytica.
In the letter, Maloney cites several cases in which Parler users were arrested and accused of “threatening violence against elected officials” and discussed the organization of protest groups on the platform. In the days following the deadly attack on Capitol, Parler was kicked out of Apple and Google’s app stores and forced to go offline after several web hosts refused to serve the site. To date, Parler is still offline.
Last week, the FBI announced that it had received more than 100,000 pieces of digital evidence after the Capitol riot. It is not clear how much of this evidence is unique, but FBI officials have opened more than 150 cases of individual protesters.