‘A chilling and disturbing day in America…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) YouTube removed a video that shows Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., naming the person who many say is the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower on the Senate floor — a move that Paul called “dangerous and politically biased.”
The platform said in a statement on Thursday that “videos, comments, and other forms of content that mention the leaked whistleblower’s name” violate its community guidelines and will thus be removed from the site.
“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 re-upload,” Ivy Choi, a spokesperson for the company, told Politico.
Though the whistleblower hasn’t been officially outed, Republicans suspect that CIA officer Eric Ciaramella is the one who filed the formal inspector general’s complaint on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The clip showed Paul mentioning Ciaramella during the Senate’s impeachment trial, although the senator did not identify him as the whistleblower.
Paul did so after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to read a question Paul had submitted that included the alleged whistleblower’s name.
Paul clarified that nowhere in his speech did he “accuse anyone of being a whistleblower.”
His question simply stated: “Manager Schiff and Counsel for the President, are you aware that House Intelligence Committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella when at the National Security Council together, and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings?”
Regardless, YouTube has taken it upon itself to “censure speech,” Paul said in a statement.
“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure speech,” he continued. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”