Rep. Ken Buck No Longer Accepts Campaign Donations from Big Tech

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) announced Wednesday he will no longer accept campaign donations from Big Tech companies.

Buck is a ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.

“As the lead Republican on the antitrust subcommittee working to hold Big Tech accountable for their anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior, I cannot continue to accept campaign donations from Facebook, Google, or Amazon,” Buck said in a statement.

“Starting today, I will no longer accept any money from these companies.”

In 2020, Alphabet Inc. donated $5,000 to Buck’s campaign, making it his 17th largest donor, Open Secrets reported. Amazon contributed $2,500.

In 2018, Google was #48 in Buck’s Top 100 donors with $2,000 while Amazon gave $1,000. Microsoft was his top tech donor at $5,000, according to Open Secrets.

In October, Buck, a former district attorney in Colorado, published a report titled, “The Third Way: Antitrust Enforcement in Big Tech.”

The report argued:

Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have used their monopoly power to act as gatekeepers to the marketplace, undermine potential competition, and pick winners and losers, all while simultaneously cozying up to unfriendly nations like China in order to further expand their global footprint.

More recently, Buck and several House Republicans sent a letter to Facebook last month arguing “Facebook’s de-platforming and content moderation standards are not applied in a fair and neutral manner,” notably with regard to the ban on former President Donald Trump.

“Instances where conservative viewpoints have been censored, blocked, or diminished harm the free exchange of ideas and irreparably damage conservative Americans’ faith in the fundamental fairness of purportedly neutral actors like Facebook,” they wrote.

“To effectively enforce content moderation rules in the public domain, Facebook must act in an impartial manner or risk delegitimizing its efforts to prevent violence and hate.”

Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.