YouTube has removed a video clip of Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) calling out Chief Justice John Roberts on the Senate floor for blocking his question naming Ukraine “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella during the Senate impeachment trial.
“A chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as @youtube decide to censor speech,” Paul tweeted. “Protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Sen floor, can be blocked from getting to the people. This is dangerous & politically biased.”
A chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as @YouTube decide to censor speech. Protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Sen floor, can be blocked from getting to the people. This is dangerous & politically biased. https://t.co/LnbkZJOYgS
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) February 13, 2020
“Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people,” Paul told Politico Playbook. “This is dangerous and politically biased. Nowhere in my speech did I accuse anyone of being a whistleblower, nor do I know the whistleblower’s identity,” he added.
YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi told Politico that exposing the CIA operative’s name violated the platform’s “Community Guidelines.”
“Videos, comments, and other forms of content that mention the leaked whistleblower’s name violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines and will be removed from YouTube,” Choi said. “We’ve removed hundreds of videos and over ten thousand comments that contained the name. Video uploaders have the option to edit their videos to exclude the name and reupload.”
Paul’s censored speech can still be viewed on Twitter.
Senator @RandPaul explains why his question about the "whistleblower" is critical to understanding how "they gamed the system in order to try to bring down the president." pic.twitter.com/uKS1qZffJ7
— BlazeTV (@BlazeTV) February 10, 2020
Roberts refused to read Paul’s questions naming the “whistleblower” on Jan. 29 and on Jan.30.
After the Chief Justice blocked Paul’s question for the second time, the Kentucky senator left the trial to hold an impromptu press conference in which he read his question naming Ciaramella.
YouTube began purging those videos earlier this month, as Breitbart reported on Feb. 4. A video the news site uploaded onto its official channel was “promptly locked the video in ‘private’ mode,” making it inaccessible to the general public.
Some of those videos remain on YouTube, but perhaps not for long.
“It’s very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists part of the Obama, Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president,” Paul said during his impromptu news conference on Jan. 30.
“I’m the biggest defender of the whistleblower statutes,” he added. “I’ve been one to say that Edward Snowden is the greatest whistleblower of all time. Yet half of these people down here that say they support the whistleblower statute wanted to put Edward Snowden to death or in jail forever.” Paul went on to argue that Democrats “shouldn’t be able to use statutes to somehow make a whole part of the discussion over this impeachment go away.”
Yet making that inconvenient discussion “go away” is exactly what the tech giant is doing by actively censoring videos naming the instigator of the impeachment farce.