US House committee cancels vote on holding Meta's Zuckerberg in contempt

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Republican-led US House Oversight Committee abruptly halted a vote Thursday on if the panel would recommend holding Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress.

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said he decided to pause the vote "based on Facebook’s newfound commitment to fully cooperate with the Committee’s investigation."

"To be clear, contempt is still on the table and WILL be used if Facebook fails to cooperate in FULL," he wrote on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. "To be continued..."

A vote to hold Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook's parent company, in contempt of Congress was supposed to be held hours before Jordan made the announcement.

At issue are claims from the panel's Republicans that the company failed to respond to requests for information about alleged efforts to censor conservative voices on social media. It had subpoenaed communications between Meta and its subsidiaries, and executive branch officials.

A Facebook spokesperson pushed back Tuesday on the suggestions that it has been uncooperative, maintaining the company "has operated in good faith with this committee’s sweeping requests for information." That includes more than 53,000 pages of internal and external documents that have been handed over, Andy Stone said on X.

"We began sharing documents before the committee’s February subpoena and have continued to do so," he wrote. "Meta will continue to comply, as we have thus far, with good faith requests from the committee."