August 21, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The prominent tech expert behind a major study on Google’s power to influence national elections is speaking out after failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed his work had been “debunked.”
On Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted about a study by Dr. Robert Epstein, a research psychologist with the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology who estimated that Google’s search results swung at least 2.6 million votes to Clinton in 2016 (potentially accounting for the Democrat nominee’s popular-vote margin of just under 2.9 million):
Wow, Report Just Out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought! @JudicialWatch
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2019
“I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 election-related searches conducted by a diverse group of Americans on Google, Bing, and Yahoo in the weeks leading up to the election, and Google search results … were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton in all 10 positions on the first page of search results in both blue states and red states,” Epstein told Congress in July.
The former First Lady, New York Senator, and Secretary of State fired back with a tweet claiming Epstein’s study has been “debunked”:
The debunked study you’re referring to was based on 21 undecided voters. For context that’s about half the number of people associated with your campaign who have been indicted. https://t.co/0zHnWvGjSv
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 19, 2019
On Tuesday, Epstein – who personally supported Clinton in 2016 – responded to both politicians with a series of tweets arguing that while Trump’s comments were “slightly wrong” (he estimated Google influenced between 2.6 million and 10.4 million undecided voters, not 16 million), Clinton’s was “shameful.”
Now, switching to .@HillaryClinton: This is going to hurt me to write, because I & my whole extended family have been strong supporters of the Clintons for decades. I have a framed, signed letter from #Bill on the wall near my desk. But #Hillary should be ashamed of herself. pic.twitter.com/FKyLiKonyw
— Dr. Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) August 20, 2019
He noted that Clinton enjoyed substantial top-to-bottom support from Google…
#Hillary has long depended on #Google for both money & votes. Her largest donor in 2016 was Alphabet/Google. Her Chief Technology Officer during the campaign was Stephanie Hannon, a former Google exec. And then there's #EricSchmidt, longtime head of Google – the guy in the pic: pic.twitter.com/dSV8wOPwAH
— Dr. Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) August 20, 2019
About 96% of 2016 campaign donations from #Google employees went to #Hillary. And #ElanKriegel, Hillary's Chief Analytics Officer, credits his 2012 tech team, informally supervised by #EricSchmidt, for half of Obama's win margin: nearly 2.5 million votes. https://t.co/vEaufq3M11 pic.twitter.com/tSI05RS3uu
— Dr. Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) August 20, 2019
…that his work is taken seriously in mainstream academia…
#Hillary: If my work has been “debunked,” why was it included in a volume just published by #Oxford U.? Why have I been invited to speak about it at prestigious venues worldwide: #Stanford U., #Yale Law School (where both you & Bill went), even our #Senate (where you served)? pic.twitter.com/rmMeB1oJn3
— Dr. Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) August 20, 2019
…and urged Clinton to heed the whistleblowers who’ve spoken out about partisan bias within Google:
#Hillary: Is that what you want your legacy to be? Whistleblowers & leaks from #Google have confirmed that the company blacklists, re-ranks & uses “ephemeral experiences” (which I study) to control people worldwide. Do you approve? https://t.co/xZEV7PqyHu
— Dr. Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) August 20, 2019
Regarding Clinton’s claim that his study was based just on “21 undecided voters,” Epstein explained Wednesday to Glenn Beck, “What I actually captured and analyzed, which no one has ever done before, is I captured 13,207 election-related searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and the 98,000 search results to which the search results linked … I was able to estimate that level of bias, how many votes could be shifted, and I know that from extensive experimental research which now has involved tens of thousands of participants, five national elections in four countries.”
Last week, Epstein told Breitbart News that a recent leak of more than 950 internal Google documents confirmed what he has been saying for years about Google maintaining blacklists of certain individuals, websites, and topics, and manual re-ranking of search results.
“It’s smoking gun proof that their leaders — including their CEO — have been lying under oath when they’re giving sworn testimony before Congress,” he said. “I’m like a kid in a candy store because I’ve been saying these things and writing about these things since 2012, and for years no one paid any attention to me.”