Hawley says muzzled Meta whistleblower will testify over China dealings next week

FIRST ON FOX – Sen. Josh Hawley. R-Mo., told Fox News Thursday that Meta whistleblower and former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams will testify next week before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about problems with the social media giant’s internal culture and its work overseas – the same issues that prompted her explosive tell-all to be blocked from publication earlier this year. 

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Hawley took aim at what he said was an “amoral and corrupt company that crafted a custom censorship system for Communist China.” 

He also criticized their attempts to silence a former employee.

“Sarah Wynn-Williams alleges that Facebook is an amoral and corrupt company that crafted a custom censorship system for Communist China,” Hawley told Fox News Digital in a statement. “Is it a surprise to anyone that Meta secured a gag order against her? Censorship is what Big Tech does best, and since Facebook is trying to quash her story, my subcommittee is going to officially investigate it,” he added.

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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, arrives for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The memoir, “Careless People,” attempted to make public what Wynn-Williams has described as Facebook’s relationship and alleged cooperation with certain regimes—primarily, the Communist regime in China— and what she alleges were Meta’s “plans to build censorship tools, punish dissidents, and make American user data available to the CCP.”

Hawley, a member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, invited Wynn-Williams to testify next week after her memoir was blocked from publication.

In a statement on X, Hawley said Wynn-Williams will testify before the panel “in public, under oath” to detail what the Missouri Republican described as some of the “explosive” evidence that was shared in her book that was blocked from publication earlier this year.

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Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Thursday shared what he called “smoking-gun documents” proving Facebook censored Americans on behalf of the Biden administration. (Reuters Photos)

The hearing, officials with knowledge of the proceedings told Fox News Digital, is an attempt to get to the heart of the same claims while respecting the restrictions reached by the arbiters.

News of her testimony next week, first shared with Fox News Digital, comes shortly after Meta blocked Wynn-Wiliams from publishing a memoir earlier this year detailing her six-year tenure at the company. 

Republicans on the panel announced their investigation into Meta’s censorship work just one day earlier. They said their work will focus primarily on Meta’s dealings with China and whether it provided certain AI tools to the CCP.

Hawley and a group of other panel Republicans also demanded Meta provide them with all “records and communications pertaining to Meta’s operations within China, including the potential use of AI models developed by or in collaboration with the CCP.”

The memoir, titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” was among the most eagerly anticipated books of the year, earning early accolades and positive reviews from the New York Times and other book reviewers. For a time, it was available for pre-sale on Amazon and other major retailers. 

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This illustration shows the Meta logo on a smartphone. (Costfoto/NurPhoto )

The memoir attempted to shed new light on what Wynn-Williams claimed is a problematic culture at the social media company, both internally – where the book develed into allegations of personal harassment that stretched to the company’s top leadership – as well as its dealings with certain unsavory regimes. 

In March, however, Meta secured a victory in arbitration proceedings to block the memoir’s release. They have since attempted to refute the validity of Wynn Williams’s remarks, characterizing her as a “disgruntled employee.”

A spokesperson for Meta told Fox News Digital that the company does not currently operate in China — a decision it reached years ago, and which CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced publicly in a 2019 speech. 

“We do not operate our services in China today,” Dani Lever, a spokesperson for Meta, said in an emailed statement.

And while Lever told Fox News that it “is no secret” Meta was once interested in doing so as part of Facebook’s effort to “connect the world,” she noted that company’s possible expansion had been widely reported at the time. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a 2019 speech that the company would not pursue an expansion in China.

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Visitors walk in front of the Meta (Facebook) sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Dec. 29, 2022. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Lawyers for Meta cited nondisclosure agreements signed by Wynn-Williams as a condition of her employment prohibiting her from sharing certain information about her time at the company, including disparaging remarks. 

The news comes as Senate Republicans have pushed for more information regarding Meta’s business in China and the extent of its work. 

The muzzling attempts from Meta employees have done little to thwart the GOP-led Senate Judiciary probe, however.

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Citing internal documents received by the subcommittee, members said this week that Facebook’s plan “reportedly included more engagement with the CCP, and later included plans to partner with a Chinese company to build censorship tools and provide the CCP with user data.”

“Further, Facebook’s censorship efforts on behalf of the CCP allegedly extended to dissidents outside of China, including in the United States,” they said.