Exhibit 1138 ยท Letter to a congressional committee
Letter from Mark Zuckerberg (Meta Platforms) to Chairman Jim Jordan, House Committee on the Judiciary
Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.
Two-page letter, on Meta letterhead and signed '/s/ Mark Zuckerberg', copied to the Ranking Member. It says senior Biden administration officials 'repeatedly pressured' Meta's teams in 2021 over certain COVID-19 content 'including humor and satire', that the decision to take content down was Meta's, that 'the government pressure was wrong', and that the FBI warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma before the 2020 election, after which Meta sent the New York Post story to fact-checkers and 'temporarily demoted' it. It says Meta no longer demotes content in the U.S. while fact-checks are pending. The White House replied (as reported by AFP) that the administration 'encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety'.
- Source
- Meta Platforms, Inc.
- Date
- 26 August 2024
- Quoted from
- Letter, third paragraph of text, p. 1
- Grade
- Primary record
- Document
- http://web.archive.org/web/20241102111822/https://www.dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/meta-letter-082024.pdf
- Accessed
- 2026-11-10
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- The letter was released by House Judiciary Republicans on 26 August 2024 and published by the Daily Signal; the url is the Wayback copy of that PDF (SHA-256 of the PDF as downloaded: 9d7e28da427d1f6b006be53c7281565039cc6cb4c3c4a1e967b3311c5d2e6792). The Committee's own copy was not found. Authenticity: the named party's public statements and its later Senate testimony (exhibit potts-2025-senate-commerce-testimony) adopt the letter. The existing exhibit mace-2024-letter-to-white-house-zuckerberg quotes the same letter at reported grade and can be upgraded to this copy.