Jim Jordan attacks Trump DA Alvin Bragg over new YouTube restriction
When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg won his falsified business records criminal case against Donald Trump last month, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) became one of the prosecutor's biggest critics.
Now, as The Daily Beast reports, Jordan is angry with Bragg after the New York prosecutor played a role in YouTube's latest restriction on videos instructing users how to make illegal gun modifications.
Still, the Beast notes, "YouTube has yet to eliminate the hundreds of videos that explain how to use milling machinery to professionally turn a hunk of metal into the functional part of a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle."
READ MORE: Jim Jordan summons Alvin Bragg to congressional hearing over Trump's criminal conviction
According to the news outlet, the MAGA lawmaker submitted a letter to YouTube's parent company last week "regarding its 'interactions with the executive branch and other entities regarding changes to its firearms content policy.' It also called out Bragg by name, given that the prominent prosecutor publicly pressured YouTube in April over his concerns about the proliferation of how-to videos of 'ghost guns,' homemade firearms that aren’t stamped with a serial number and are virtually untraceable."
The Beast reports:
In his letter, Jordan claimed that 'YouTube has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past.' He went on to write that 'these revelations raise serious concerns about whether and to what extent the executive branch is working with third parties and other intermediaries to coerce and/or collude with YouTube to censor lawful speech regarding the Second Amendment and firearms.'
However, Jordan couldn’t resist turning the letter into yet another partisan screed that somehow connected guns on YouTube to his fervent love of MAGA. In his letter to the company, Jordan wrote that Bragg 'hired the third highest-ranking Department of Justice official to assist in his partisan prosecution of President Trump,' alluding to the fact that Bragg brought a prosecutor onboard to help develop the criminal case against Trump, which ended with a trial in which jurors concluded the former president committed 34 felonies.
The Beast reports Bragg's office said in a statement this week, "The office stands by any efforts made to encourage companies to act responsibly and prevent children from accessing tutorials to manufacture dangerous guns that can be used in violent crimes."
READ MORE: 'These kinds of folks': Jim Jordan wants to block Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg
The Daily Beast's full report is available here (subscription required).
