US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin seemingly defuses Donald Trump’s ‘treason’ probe threat to Google over China work
- ‘We’re not aware of any areas where Google is working with the Chinese government that in any way raises concerns,’ says Mnuchin
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by John Hendel on politico.com on July 24, 2019.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Wednesday appeared to defuse a threat from President Donald Trump to have multiple agencies probe Google for potential treason over the company’s work in China.
“The president and I did diligence on this issue and we’re not aware of any areas where Google is working with the Chinese government that in any way raises concerns,” Mnuchin said during a wide-ranging interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “Google is an American company that wants to help out the US.”
He and Trump met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai this week, Mnuchin said, and came away assured the company does “very minimal” work in China, limited to “open-source” efforts that do not raise national security concerns. Pichai was at the White House Monday to discuss a range of economic issues largely centred around China.
Trump says he’ll pursue claim that Google has ‘treasonous’ ties to China
The president said last week that he may urge “various agencies, including perhaps our attorney general” to look into a “very strong charge” of treason raised by Peter Thiel, a prominent Trump booster and Facebook board member.
Thiel accused Google of “engag[ing] in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military”, an apparent reference to the company pulling back on US defence contracting while still pursuing business and research interests in China, whose government exercises tight control over businesses in the country.
Mnuchin also endorsed the Trump administration's antitrust probe of tech giants. He singled out Amazon, which, he said, “destroyed the retail industry across the United States”.
