The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, known as RICO, was adopted in 1970 to prosecute mob crime. It targets prostitution rings, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, extortion and other “organized” crime.
Now, a prominent Congress member wants an investigation to determine whether or not RICO should be applied to Amazon, Google, Apple and other tech giants.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., known for exposing the Democrats’ use of a bogus dossier to remove Trump from office, on Sunday spotlighted the social media companies’ effort to get rid of Parler, an alternative to Twitter that has attracted conservatives.
“There should be a racketeering investigation on all the people that coordinated this attack on not only a company, but on all of those like us,” he said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Nunes’ comments came after Apple and Google eliminated the Parler app from their sites and Amazon dumped Parler from its servers, completely shutting down the platform.
Nunes said the coordinated attack on Parler was “a violation” of antitrust, civil rights and RICO requirements.
“I don’t know where the hell the Department of Justice is at right now or the FBI,” said Nunes, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“I have 3 million followers on Parler. Tonight I will no longer be able to communicate with those people and they’re Americans,” he said.
Amazon claimed Parler failed to deal with “a steady increase in violent content.”
Its critics accused Parler of allowing people to post discussions about violence at the U.S. Capitol last week.
A Google official told Fox News, “We’re aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.”
But Nunes said that consequently “there is no longer a free and open social media company or site for any American to get on any longer.”
Anyone who uses social media, he said, must be “regulated by left-wingers that are at Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where you get shadow banned, nobody gets to see you, they get to decide what’s violent and not violent.”
Bartiromo said the moves “feel like Communist China, where there is this crackdown on free speech.”
The social media companies, Nunes said, are “working for the Democratic socialist party.
“They’re being cheered on by this. They are state-run media and really it’s the communication system,” he said. “That’s how people are receiving their information is through this funnel of very few companies that are being controlled by the Democrat socialist party.”
The Post Millennial reported that when President Trump created an account on Parler, the company’s growing traffic “went through the roof.”
“This was when Google, Apple and Amazon all cooperated to do their best to shut down Parler for good.”
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