The House Judiciary Committee has announced it will hold a hearing on Thursday to begin contempt proceedings against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for failing to comply with a series of subpoenas to turn over documents related to the panel’s investigation into whether the company censored free speech on its platform.
Committee members will use the hearing to mark up its contempt resolution against Zuckerberg.
The House Judiciary Committee would have to vote this out of committee, and then GOP leadership would have to schedule this for a vote on the House floor.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told CNN, “For many months, Meta has 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.”
“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. Meta will continue to comply, as we have thus far, with good faith requests from the committee,” Stone added.
A successful contempt vote would be both symbolic and used as a tool to compel Zuckerberg to turn over documents, but also could have legal implications if the Meta CEO continues to resist cooperation and the courts decide to take it up.
For example, several people such as Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows and members of Congress were held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas related to the House January 6 committee’s investigation.
Bannon was one of the cases that made it to court (many others didn’t), and a federal grand jury found him guilty and sentenced him to fourth months in prison.
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