Matt Gaetz Urges Attorney General to Indict Mark Zuckerberg for Delivering False Testimony to Congress
Shane Trejo
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Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is recommending to Attorney General Bill Barr that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg receive a criminal referral “for materially false statements made to Congress while testifying under oath.”
“As a member of this body, I question Mr. Zuckerberg’s veracity, and challenge his willingness to cooperate with our oversight authority, diverting congressional resources during time-sensitive investigations, and materially impeding our work,” Gaetz wrote in a letter released on Monday.
“Accordingly, I respectfully refer Mr. Zuckerberg to the Department for an investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. §§1001, 1505, and 1621 for materially false statements made to Congress while testifying under oath,” Gaetz added.
Zuckerberg testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on April 10, 2018, and then again in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee a day later. Zuckerberg denied repeatedly that there was any bias against his conservatives on his platform in terms of content moderation policies.
Big League Politics reported last month on how Project Veritas produced undercover video showing Facebook content moderators boasting about how they suppress conservative and pro-Trump content on the platform:
Guerrilla journalism outfit Project Veritas released information on Tuesday from a Facebook insider who is blowing the whistle about the company’s biased anti-conservative content moderation policies.
Zach McElroy, who was formerly a content moderator for Facebook employed by the firm, Cognizant, spoke out against the company’s Big Brother censorship policies to Veritas.
“Facebook is, needless to say, a behemoth of a company, and most people – including most of my former coworkers who didn’t even find these abuses objectionable – would be terrified of ever speaking out publicly against them,” McElroy wrote on his GoFundMe page.
“Threatening NDAs ensured most of our silence, but nothing can stop the truth, and the courage of past [Veritas] whistleblowers gave me the confidence to step forward and expose the company for its egregious stifling of free speech and rampant abuse toward conservative voices,” he added.
The Veritas disclosure showed McElroy speaking with James O’Keefe, the organization’s founder, about how Facebook censors conservative content. It also features candid remarks from other content moderators explaining or even bragging about how they crush right-wing dissent on the platform.
“It’s a very progressive company who’s very anti-MAGA,” said Steve Grimmett, who serves as the team lead of content review for Facebook content moderation firm, Accenture.
“If a Trump post was to come up and it was promoting Trump, then I can take that down, then I feel like that would be very impactful,” said Facebook content moderator Lara Kontakos.
“If someone is wearing a MAGA hat I’m going to delete them for terrorism and I’m just going to like go crazy,” Kontakos added.
McElroy explained to O’Keefe how Facebook knowingly operates under double standards that punish conservative spech, and how the company flouts their own terms of service to promote a left-wing political agenda.
“Well, this is an image, I believe it’s in an art museum in Portland. They put this up as a bit of a political statement,” McElroy said regarding a lewd drawing of President Trump getting his throat slit.
“Facebook actually reacted to this at least internally. They gave us a memo saying that this would not violate for violence or incitement, or anything else really, and so we were told to leave this image up,” he added.
To contrast, an anti-gun control meme featuring failed Democrat presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke getting shot with a cartoon gun by popular Looney Tunes character Elmer Fudd was banished from the platform.
Veritas founder James O’Keefe fully supports Gaetz’s push for the technocratic oligarch to be investigated for potential criminal acts.
“If someone—anyone—lies to a lawmaker, he or she is deliberately manipulating the legislative process,” O’Keefe said.
“I urge DOJ to act quickly and investigate Mark Zuckerberg before Americans vote in November,” he added.
If Zuckerberg is charged and found guilty of giving false testimony to Congress, he could face up to five years in prison.
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