YouTube blocks Jan 6 committee hearing video for including clip of Trump spreading baseless election claims

‘We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account,’ Donald Trump says in clip. There’s no evidence this happened

A video of the public congressional hearing of the House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection has been blocked by YouTube for including a video of Donald Trump reiterating baseless election fraud claims.

Clips uploaded by the select committee of its hearings have been widely seen and circulated as the panel makes its findings about the Capitol attack public, including some of the most shocking and raw moments.

But one of the clips was made private by YouTube because it reportedly violated the platform’s rules on election misinformation, according to a report by The New York Times on Tuesday.

NYT had earlier reported that the video had been removed but later updated its story saying the video was made private.

The video in question was a small excerpt of the hearing held on 14 June which included recorded testimony of former Attorney General William Barr.

For context on Mr Barr’s testimony, the video also included a clip of former president Mr Trump speaking to the Fox Business channel where he claimed votes that went to him had been transferred to Joe Biden instead, an unfounded claim that his team has not been able to prove.

“We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account,” Mr Trump said in the clip.

This led to YouTube’s internal mechanism flagging the clip as election misinformation, according to a spokesperson for the platform. The company said the clip violates its rules.

“Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, if it does not provide sufficient context,” YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said in a statement defending the company’s action.

“We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and have removed the video uploaded by the Jan 6 committee channel,” she said in the statement made prior to the video being made private.

While the video of the full hearing is still on YouTube, the company did not mention whether there were plans to make the clip public again.