Jim Jordan pauses Mark Zuckerberg's contempt of Congress vote

Rep. Jim Jordan delayed a vote to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress after the company provided additional internal documents to the House Judiciary Committee as part of its probe into allegations that tech companies censor conservative online speech.

Threat remains: Jordan (R-Ohio) announced in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday, “Based on Facebook’s newfound commitment to fully cooperate with the Committee’s investigation, the Committee has decided to hold contempt in abeyance. For now. To be clear, contempt is still on the table and WILL be used if Facebook fails to cooperate in FULL.”

The committee had previously scheduled a markup on Thursday afternoon to vote on the Zuckerberg contempt of Congress resolution — which had the intent of pressuring the company to release additional internal documents the panel had been seeking. Meta has been providing the committee documents throughout the week, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told POLITICO.

‘Facebook files’: Jordan has made the billionaire owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads his key target in his months-long investigation alleging tech companies colluded with the Biden administration to stifle free speech.

He issued a thread of posts on X Thursday claiming the Meta provided “smoking-gun docs” that prove the company “censored Americans because of Biden White House pressure.” The thread included images of Facebook internal emails to Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, that said, “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House” to remove posts that discouraged Covid-19 vaccine uptake.

Calling foul: Meta said it has complied with the investigation pointing to more than 53,000 pages of documents it handed over and the 10 current or former employees it made available for interviews. "Meta will continue to comply, as we have thus far, with good faith requests from the committee,” Stone said in a statement on Tuesday when the initial markup was announced.

Additional tech targets: Additionally, Jordan had also subpoenaed Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple in February, compelling them to provide documents in the probe investigating alleged collusion between the Biden administration and large tech platforms to censor “free speech.”

Jordan’s committee probe has advanced in parallel with a lawsuit by Republican state attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration alleging the executive branch suppressed conservative speech. Documents in that case have revealed communications between the Biden White House and Meta employees, including emails between Biden officials requesting that Meta officials remove certain Covid-19 misinformation in the height of the pandemic that violated the platform’s Covid-19 misinfo policies.