Trump slaps Google on alleged China ties

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to threaten that his administration would “take a look” at Google, opening an investigation into the search giant out of concern that it has been breached by the Chinese government.

Trump’s shot at Google came in a tweet that cited recent comments from Peter Thiel, a top venture capitalist and one of the president’s supporters, who this week called for the FBI and CIA to probe the company on grounds it may have committed treason for its operations in China.

Trump did not elaborate on what he intended to do, beyond appending a short thought to a quotation he appeared to attribute to Fox and Friends, and a spokesman for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“As we have said before, we do not work with the Chinese military,” Riva Sciuto, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement.

But Trump’s threat of an investigation marks only his latest salvo at Google, which he has accused silencing his conservative supporters online and seeking to rig U.S. elections in favor of Democrats. The company has denied each of those charges, but Trump often has threatened to regulate, penalize and file lawsuits against Google and its Silicon Valley peers anyway.

Thiel this week charged that China’s top military and intelligence officials are “likely to have infiltrated Google,” a claim he repeated during an interview on Fox News on Monday night. He also has faulted the tech giant for reportedly seeking to reintroduce its search engine in China.