U.S. President Trump said Tuesday that the government will investigate whether Google, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), supports the Chinese government; a senior executive of the company refuted the charges at a Senate hearing hours later.
Trump reiterated the allegation made by Peter Thiel, co-founder and venture capitalist of PayPal, that Google might have been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence.
"He's a great man, a great man, who knows the subject better than anyone else! The Trump government will look at it!" Trump said in his tweet.
Trump later told reporters that he would ask multiple agencies, including the Ministry of Justice, to "examine the truth of Thiel's allegations".
Thiel called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to investigate Google's relationship with China and accused the company of cooperating with the Chinese military.
Joint Chiefs of Staff President Joseph Dunford expressed similar concerns at a congressional hearing in March.
"As we said before, we are not cooperating with the Chinese military," Google said in an e-mail.
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