Why are MAGA followers claiming Google is exposing crimes by the DC elite?
Supporters of United States President Donald Trump and his 'Make America Great Again' movement have latched onto a spike in the popularity of Google searches for 'criminal defense lawyer' and other crime-related terms in Washington, DC.
MAGA followers have claimed that the Google data shows that a corrupt elite in the US capital are afraid of being arrested and prosecuted under Trump's new administration.
'PANIC IN DC: Google searches explode for: – Criminal defense lawyer – RICO law – Swiss bank – Offshore bank – Wire money – IBAN – Statute of limitations,' the MAGA-linked X account Libs Of TikTok posted to its more than four million followers on Sunday.
The post, accompanied by screenshots of search terms on Google Trends, has been shared more than 16,000 times, attracted more than 65,000 'likes', and received some 1.9 million views on X.
The Google Trends data has been amplified by numerous prominent MAGA figures to promote the narrative that DC elites are fearful of being exposed for their crimes.
'The Beltway is in full panic mode,' Matt Gaetz, a close Trump ally and former Florida congressman, said on his show on the right-wing One America News Network on Wednesday, using a common expression for the political and social elite of Washington, DC.
'Google search trends prove it, and the guilty are sweating bullets like they are auditioning for a mob flick,' Gaetz said.
'Dumb criminals googling their crime,' conservative podcaster Josie Glabach, whose X account 'Redheaded Libertarian' has more than 852,000 followers, posted on Sunday.
While Google data does show a surge in the relative popularity of particular search terms, the truth is less clear-cut than what is being portrayed in MAGA circles.
So what is actually going on in Washington, DC?
What do the claims have to do with Trump's efforts to cut government spending?
The claims come as Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk are undertaking a sweeping review of the federal bureaucracy with the stated mission of rooting out waste, abuse and fraud.
Some prominent MAGA figures, including Gaetz, have drawn a direct link between the Google data and Musk's cost-cutting efforts via his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DOGE has overseen the layoffs or resignations of tens of thousands of government employees and set in motion plans to dismiss potentially hundreds of thousands more.
Over the past month, Musk's task force has cut employees at most government agencies, including the Department of State, Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Some federal employees are now suing the US government through unions like the American Federation of Government Employees.
The cuts have reinforced many longstanding MAGA beliefs about corruption in the federal government.
Many MAGA supporters subscribe to the idea of a 'Deep State', the conspiracy theory that the US government is run by a secretive cabal of officials that is unaccountable to the US president or Congress.
As with other conspiracy theorists, MAGA supporters believe everything is 'interconnected', Mihaela Mihailescu, a PhD researcher at the University of Bath focused on the politics of the internet, told Al Jazeera.
They believe that 'Washington, DC, is in full-blown panic mode, with corrupt officials desperately searching for offshore bank accounts and legal loopholes as Trump 'cleans house'', Mihailescu said.
'The claim that a sudden surge in Google searches for terms like 'RICO law' and 'Swiss bank' indicates a widespread exodus of corrupt bureaucrats is based on little more than speculation – never mind that we have zero evidence that these searches are even coming from DC insiders,' she added.
A lack of evidence has been no obstacle to the spread of Deep State-related conspiracy theories in the past, including Q Anon and Pizzagate – which claimed, respectively, that Trump was secretly fighting a cabal of cannibalistic Satan worshippers and high-level members of the Democratic Party operated a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria.
What do the Google Trends results actually show?
Al Jazeera on Thursday carried out searches of the terms highlighted by 'Libs of TikTok' on Google Trends and found a spike in certain phrases in the Washington, DC, area in the weeks surrounding Trump's inauguration.
Searches for 'criminal defense lawyer', 'lawyer', 'RICO law', 'Swiss bank', and 'IBAN' all rose in popularity around this time.
While these results indicate there was a surge in the relative popularity of certain searches, it is difficult to say much more than that due to the nature of Google Trends.
According to Google, Google Trends takes a sample of aggregated search data to show what search terms are rising and falling in popularity during a particular period.
Data is presented on a scale of 0-100, which lets users make an 'apples to apples' comparison between searches in a certain place over a certain time period.
The number 100 indicates a peak in popularity relative to other terms, but 0 does not necessarily mean there were zero searches, according to Google.
What are the limitations of Google Trends?
Google Trends is not scientific and should not be taken as a 'perfect mirror of search activity', according to the tech giant.
'A spike in a particular topic does not reflect that a topic is somehow 'popular' or 'winning,' only that for some unspecified reason, there appear to be many users performing a search about a topic,' the Google Trends FAQ section states.
One of the biggest limitations of Google Trends is that Google does not disclose absolute numbers, Wietze Beukema, a UK-based cyberthreat engineer, told Al Jazeera.
'Google Trends is a non-scientific tool provided by Google to give some high-level insights into search patterns. As shown by [the Libs of Tik Tok] example, it is possible to get these insights for smaller geographical areas,' Beukema said.
'It is first of all important to stress that Google doesn't give absolute numbers, but just relative index figures. For example, [Libs of] TikTok appears to show a four-fold increase in searches for the word 'lawyer' in the DC area. To know whether that is significant, you'd have to see the absolute numbers,' he said.
This means, for example, that a line trending downwards on Google Trends indicates a term's relative popularity is decreasing – not necessarily that the total number of searches is decreasing, according to a Google page explaining the tool.
The same goes for a line trending upwards.
What conclusions can we draw from the Libs of TikTok searches?
People who study statistics often point out that correlation is not the same as causation – and the same is true for Google Trends.
Google Trends cannot by itself explain why or how the surge in particular searches in Washington, DC, occurred, Beukema said.
Searches for criminal defence lawyers in the DC area could have as prosaic an explanation as an ad campaign, he said.
'It is also important to realise that Google uses a sample of the search volume rather than all searches, meaning the same query can produce different outcomes depending on when you run it,' Beukema said.
Google Trend results are also not immune to the influence of bots and VPNs, which can make it appear a user is in one location when they are really somewhere else.
'Even if the figures are accurate, it remains to be seen what can be derived from these 'insights'. It is easy to read some interpretation into an increase/decrease of search volume, but proving a direct causation – rather than an observed correlation – is hard, if not impossible,' Beukema said.
Mihailescu, the PhD researcher, said the spike in certain search terms in Washington, DC, could be due to many things, including 'a mix of media-driven curiosity, online speculation, and, of course, the internet's favourite pastime: doomsday prepping for imaginary scenarios'.
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