House GOP may try to impeach Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee could vote later this week to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt. a new report from panchbol news monday.

The potential contempt vote hinges on the committee’s February subpoena demanding Meta to produce documents and communications related to content moderation discussions it had with executive branch officials. Committee members have accused Meta of failing to cooperate with the investigation by withholding documents.

sources told punch bowl There is a plan to vote on Thursday.

Responding to the potential down vote, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone instructed ledge to one statement made by the company fox business adding that Meta “shared more than 50,000 pages of documents” and made “about a dozen current and former employees available for discussion on external and internal issues” in response to the committee’s subpoena.

That clearly hasn’t been enough for Republicans, who have used their new House majority since the 2020 election to scrutinize coordination between the White House and tech companies to censor content. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft all received equal summons Sent to Meta in February.

Russell Dye, a spokesman for the committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), said, “META has important information that it has not turned over to the committee about the federal government’s efforts to censor speech online and how META has responded to those efforts.” punch bowl,

Democrats have pointed out that there is no law preventing tech companies from cooperating with the government to find and remove harmful content, namely content that falsely claims the 2020 presidential election was rigged or downplayed COVID.

The GOP-led committee excluded Twitter from the investigation, instead choosing to support its new owner, Elon Musk, and the allegations he helped raise in a series of reports called the “Twitter Files.” Shortly after purchasing the company last year, Musk granted a limited group of journalists access to select internal company documents that described moderation decisions related to Hunter Biden’s laptop, “shadowbanning” and the 2021 suspension of former President Donald Trump.

While the committee’s subsequent hearings resulted in little more than swordplay, a federal judge recently issued a preliminary injunction banning Biden administration officials from making moderation requests to the platforms.

The committee escalated its fight with Meta only last week In a letter to Zuckerberg suggesting that the company’s new Threads platform “raises serious, specific concerns because it is marketed as a rival to Elon Musk’s Twitter, which has faced political harassment from the Biden administration following Musk’s commitment to free speech.”

The letter appears to be addressing an ongoing Federal Trade Commission investigation into Musk’s acquisition of the company. Earlier this month, the committee convened a hearing with FTC chair Leena Khan that focused primarily on the investigation and document requests it made regarding the company’s privacy and security practices.

Until the Trump administration, Congress rarely voted to hold contempt votes. More recently, Trump White House advisers, such as Mark Meadows, have been held in contempt, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute,

It’s unclear whether the Justice Department will take action against Zuckerberg over any committee contempt votes. punch bowl The vote was called a “mostly symbolic step” for the committee.