Zuckerberg meets lawmakers in secret before public showdown on Capitol Hill as Facebook is hit by another data scandal
The Facebook CEO testifies to congressional committees Tuesday and Wednesday
He has been under fire since revelations Cambridge Analytica was able to scrape data for tens of millions of users from the site
Zuckerberg told reporters he accepted blame for the leak
He is being coached by a team of experts and a former George W. Bush aide
Facebook has given $7 million in campaign contributions to lawmakers since 2007
Facebook suspended another data firm, CubeYou, over how it scraped data from user surveys
By GEOFF EARLE
DAILYMAIL.COM
9 April 2018
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to earn some ‘likes’ from lawmakers, meeting privately Monday with some of those who will question him on the firm’s privacy scandal later this week.
The secret Monday meetings come in advance of Zuckerberg’s Tuesday testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Wednesday before a joint hearing with the Senate Judiciary and Commerce panels.
The closed-door meetings run through Monday afternoon and include some of the members who will question Zuckerberg, Reuters reported.
The world’s fifth richest man is being coached by a team of experts and a former George W. Bush aide about how to handle lawmakers waiting for the chance to interrupt him or bash Facebook’s security practices.
He has retained a team from the top law firm WilmerHale as well as outside consultants. It even set up mock-hearings with consultants playing members of Congress, the New York Times reported.
The behind-the-scenes prepping comes as Zuckerberg negotiated a media tour in which he accepted responsibility and the firm put out the bad and then worse news of how many millions of people had their data compromised.
‘Their goal is to make Mr. Zuckerberg appear as humble, agreeable and as forthright as possible,’ the Times reported, in a report sourced to people close to the operation.
One member of the team is Reginald Brown, who served as a special assistant and associate White House counsel to President George W. Bush.
Zuckerberg told reporters in a conference call he accepted blame for the policy that allowed political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to acquire personal data on up to 87 million users.
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