The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is threatening to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for failing to provide paperwork associated to an investigation into supposed censorship by tech firms of conservatives.
Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, stated the panel plans to hold a listening to Thursday to vote on a contempt report detailing how Zuckerberg has “willfully refused” to adjust to a February subpoena.
The measure is probably going to move the GOP-controlled committee. It might then be up to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to hold a full House vote on the contempt decision as early as this fall, after the August recess.
If the House had been to hold Zuckerberg in contempt, the Justice Division would determine whether or not to prosecute him.
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, stated the corporate has delivered greater than 50,000 pages of each inner and exterior paperwork to the committee since February. He added that additionally they have made present and former workers obtainable for interviews with lawmakers.
“For a lot of months, Meta has operated in good religion with this committee’s sweeping requests for info,” Stone stated in a press release.
Jordan, R-Ohio, issued the subpoenas to the chief executives of the 5 largest tech firms, together with Zuckerberg, shortly after Republicans took over the House in January — wanting to make good on a marketing campaign promise to examine Massive Tech’s content material moderation, notably over COVID-19.
The letters had been additionally despatched to Sundar Pichai of Alphabet; Satya Nadella of Microsoft; Tim Prepare dinner of Apple; and Andy Jassy of Amazon.com. All had been requested to flip over any paperwork associated to what they assert is widespread company censorship of conservative voices.
Twitter was notably absent from the checklist of firms subpoenaed. Its proprietor, Tesla founder Elon Musk, has confirmed to be extra sympathetic to conservatives than Twitter’s earlier administration, and Republicans in Congress have gone to bat for him. Republicans held hearings in February with former Twitter executives the place GOP lawmakers grilled the witnesses in regards to the firm’s resolution to initially block a New York Put up article in October 2020 in regards to the contents of a laptop computer belonging to Hunter Biden.
Since then, Jordan has put strain on Meta particularly, even sending a letter final week to Zuckerberg asking for the platform to produce an entire new sequence of paperwork associated to content material moderation on its new app, Threads, a brand new rival to Twitter.
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Related Press reporter Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.
