Ex-Facebook employee to tell Congress the company undermined national security
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook employee who alleged misconduct and sexual harassment at the company in a memoir , will testify before Congress Wednesday.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook employee who alleged misconduct and sexual harassment at the company in a memoir published last month, will testify before Congress on Wednesday that Meta executives undermined U.S. national security and briefed Chinese officials on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.
In her introductory statement, obtained by NBC News, Wynn-Williams will tell the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism that Meta executives “lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public.”
“I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values,” she will say, according to the prepared remarks. “They did these things in secret to win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion dollar business in China,” her statement says, referring to China-based advertisers.
Wynn-Williams, a former New Zealand diplomat, worked at Facebook from 2011 to 2017. She believes she was fired in 2017 as retaliation for accusing her boss, Joel Kaplan, who at the time was a vice president for global public policy, of sexual harassment. Meta, which owns Facebook, said that an investigation cleared Kaplan in 2017 and that Wynn-Williams’ book, “Careless People,” included “false accusations about our executives.” Meta also said other claims in the book were “out-of-date and previously reported,” and a former supervisor said she was fired for performance reasons.
In a statement Tuesday night, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone criticized Wynn-Williams’ planned remarks.
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