The Senate Intelligence Committee won’t let anyone but Google’s CEO testify next week.
The committee has invited top executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to testify on their role in protecting elections from interference and the spread of misinformation.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey agreed to attend the Sept. 5 hearing.
[Also read: Trump warns Google, Facebook, Twitter: ‘Better be careful’ about political bias]
The committee said Wednesday that Larry Page, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, was invited, but a committee spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that “to date the company has not confirmed a senior leadership official to testify.”
Google has offered to send Kent Walker, its senior vice president of Global Affairs, in place of Page, the spokesperson said.
Walker already testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in November.
“As Chairman Burr has stated, if Google’s senior leadership chooses not to be part of the solution to this pressing national security threat, that is their decision to make. However, it is the Committee’s hope that they will decide to participate in next week’s hearing,” the spokesperson said. “The purpose of this hearing is to hear from senior leadership making the decisions, not those operationalizing them.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said Wednesday that the committee could leave an empty chair and name plate open for Google next to Sandberg and Dorsey, CNN reported.
If Walker shows up, the committee will not let him testify, a spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner, the committee’s ranking Democrat, told the Washington Examiner.
President Trump has threatened to regulate the tech giant, claiming the search engine is suppressing positive stories about him and conservatives. Google’s search engine algorithms are updated continuously so that the most relevant results appear and aren’t weighted by any political ideology, the company said.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
