White House plays down draft order on Facebook, Google

WASHINGTON » The White House sought to distance itself Saturday from reports that President Donald Trump is considering an executive order that would subject tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to federal investigations for alleged political bias.

For weeks, top tech companies have been on edge, fearing that the Trump administration could seek to regulate the industry in response to the president’s tweets attacking social-media sites for silencing conservatives online.

Their worst suspicions seemed to come true Friday night, with the emergence of a draft executive order that called for nearly every federal agency to study how companies like Facebook police their platforms and refer instances of “bias” to the Justice Department for further study.

But three White House aides soon insisted they didn’t write the draft order, didn’t know where it came from and generally found it to be unworkable policy. One senior White House official confirmed the document had been floating around the White House but had not gone through the formal process, which is controlled by the staff secretary.

Asked about the document, Lindsay Walters, the deputy White House press secretary, said of the digital-age “whodunit” on Saturday: “Although the White House is concerned about the conduct of online platforms and their impact on society, this document is not the result of an official White House policymaking process.”

For months, Facebook, Google and Twitter have grappled with allegations of anticonservative bias from the country’s top Republicans.

In tweets, Trump repeatedly has charged without evidence that tech companies deliberately silence right-leaning viewers and rig search results to show negative stories about conservatives or hide their accounts altogether. He has frequently told allies that bias against conservatives is a central issue to his supporters, and his campaign has used the allegations as fodder for fundraising in recent weeks.