The House Judiciary Committee postponed a contempt recommendation against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the company handed over internal Facebook documents about the Biden administration’s role in online censorship.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan published excerpts of documents on Twitter that he said proved Facebook censored Americans under pressure from President Biden.
“Based on Facebook’s newfound commitment to fully cooperate with the committee’s investigation, the committee has decided to hold contempt in abeyance. For now,” Mr. Jordan tweeted. “To be clear, contempt is still on the table and WILL be used if Facebook fails to cooperate in FULL.”
The offending content that the Biden administration wanted removed from online included a meme poking fun at vaccines for COVID-19 and a video from former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, according to Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan said the threat of recommending that Congress hold Mr. Zuckerberg in contempt succeeded in getting new details about government-supported censorship.
A finding of contempt represents a misdemeanor criminal offense punishable by a fine with a maximum of $100,000 and imprisonment ranging from one to 12 months, according to a June 2023 Congressional Research Service report.
“Only after the committee announced its intention to hold Mark Zuckerberg in contempt did Facebook produce ANY internal documents to the committee, including these documents, which PROVE that government pressure was directly responsible for censorship on Facebook,” Mr. Jordan said.
Before Mr. Jordan’s announcement, the Judiciary Committee was set to review a contempt report on Thursday that urged the House to find Mr. Zuckerberg failed to comply with a subpoena for internal company documents.
Congressional lawmakers have long suspected the Big Tech company was hiding information on its interaction with the Biden administration to coordinate censorship.
Mr. Jordan issued a subpoena on Feb. 15 for records about Meta’s interactions with the Biden administration and had received “fewer than 40 pages of internal documents” according to the contempt report published before the new disclosures.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said Wednesday that his company had “operated in good faith with this committee’s sweeping requests for information.”
“We began sharing documents before the committee’s February subpoena and have continued to do so,” Mr. Stone said in a statement. “To date we have delivered over 53,000 pages of documents — both internal and external — and have made nearly a dozen current and former employees available to discuss external and internal matters, including some scheduled this very week.”
While Meta’s newest document production has put the contempt report on hold, lawmakers’ fight with Facebook is far from finished.
Congressional investigators have many unanswered questions about Meta and its various platforms. For example, Mr. Jordan pressed Meta last week to answer questions by July 31 about Threads, Mr. Zuckerberg’s new microblogging alternative to Twitter.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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