In July 2019, Epstein presented his research to the Senate Judiciary Committee, claiming that Google could manipulate "upwards of 15 million votes" in 2020 and recommending that Google's search index be made public. In a clarification to a question asked by Ted Cruz he also said that "2.6 million is a rock bottom minimum" for how many votes Google might have swung towards Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, and that "the range is between 2.6 million and up to 10.4 million votes". Google dismissed Epstein's research as "nothing more than a poorly constructed conspiracy theory". Epstein's white paper was not peer-reviewed and was challenged by other researchers. Among the criticisms was that a small sample size was used to extrapolate conclusions about a population of millions and the lack of disclosure of the underlying methodology. Panagiotis Metaxas, a Wellesley College computer science professor, said the paper demonstrated a possibility of "what such an influence "could" have been "if" Google was manipulating its electoral search results", adding "I and other researchers who have been auditing search results for years know that this did not happen."