Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz pressed a Democrat witness on his position as a partner at a lobbying firm that reportedly represents Pfizer and Google during a hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday.
The line of questioning was directed at Elliot Williams during a House Judiciary Committee hearing investigating “the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties.”
“Mr Williams, wouldn’t the American people feel like this government wasn’t so weaponized against them if there wasn’t such a revolving door between Department of Justice senior officials and lobbying?” Gaetz asked Williams.
Williams is a principal at the Raben Group, a lobbying firm that represents Pfizer, Microsoft, Google and other companies, according to the hearing. (RELATED: FBI To Retract Catholic Infiltration Memo, Conduct Internal Review)
Gaetz referred to a video taken by investigative group Project Veritas, which showed a Pfizer employee bragging about how his company can mutate viruses like COVID through “directed evolution.”
“Pfizer is a revolving door for all government officials. It’s pretty good for industry to be honest. It’s bad for everyone else in America,” Gaetz said, quoting the employee’s statements in the undercover video.
“I do not represent Pfizer,” Williams responded when confronted by Gaetz about the video.
Gaetz said that Raben represents “not just Pfizer, but Google as well.”
“In response to the Twitter files, we saw a statement come from the FBI where they said, ‘correspondence from the FBI on Twitter shows nothing more than examples of our traditional longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements.’ Are there such engagements between the FBI and Google?”
“When you say such engagements, sir —,” William responded
“Does Google engage with the FBI?” Gaetz interjected.
“I don’t work for either Google or the FBI, sir.”
“I’d have to again point you to your own client list that you advertise on your own website which includes Google. Does it surprise you that at the Raben’s Group website Pfizer and Google are clients?” Gaetz responded.
“I would think that maybe one of the legislative initiatives we could pursue would be to tighten this revolving door that folks at Pfizer and folks at Big Tech seem to freely acknowledge and which you seem to be the incarnate of the revolving door.”