Mark Zuckerberg asked AG Pam Bondi how to – Business News
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg secretly met with Attorney General Pam Bondi within the spring to search her advice on how to strategy President Trump about his company’s growing legal troubles, in accordance to a new e book.
The assembly, which happened March 12 on the Department of Justice, got here simply hours earlier than Zuckerberg sat down with Trump on the White House, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl wrote in his new e book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.”
Zuckerberg asked Bondi for steering on how to “effectively speak” to the president about “Meta’s concerns,” in accordance to an excerpt cited by Business Insider.
Mark Zuckerberg secretly met with Pam Bondi this spring to search her advice on how to strategy President Trump about Meta’s growing legal troubles, in accordance to a new e book. AP
It’s not clear what advice Bondi gave the techie.
Neither Meta nor the Justice Department supplied touch upon the assembly when reached by The Post.
The dialog occurred solely weeks earlier than the Federal Trade Commission opened its long-anticipated antitrust trial towards Meta — a case that might drive Zuckerberg to break aside his social media empire by spinning off Instagram and WhatsApp.
The authorities’s lawsuit, first filed during Trump’s first time period, accuses Meta of shopping for rivals to crush competitors in social media.
A federal choose has but to rule on whether or not Meta violated antitrust legal guidelines.
Since Trump’s return to energy, Zuckerberg has visited Washington, DC, a number of occasions, typically turning up at high-profile White House occasions alongside different tech moguls.
The CEO’s attraction offensive has unfolded as Meta faces a number of fronts of strain from Washington regulators and European authorities.
The reported assembly between Zuckerberg and AG Pam Bondi happened March 12 on the Department of Justice. AP
The FTC has accused Meta of stifling competitors, whereas the European Union is getting ready steep fines beneath its Digital Markets Act focusing on US tech corporations for alleged anticompetitive practices.
Earlier this 12 months, The Post reported that Zuckerberg had personally lobbied senior Trump aides to settle the FTC case earlier than trial.
He has made at the least three recognized journeys to the White House since Trump’s inauguration and met privately with high officers, together with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief Stephen Miller, in accordance to sources conversant in the visits.
Zuckerberg has reportedly lobbied Trump to help Meta keep away from antitrust penalties. Getty Images
In one of these conferences, Trump praised Meta’s plans to invest $50 billion in a Louisiana information middle to energy its artificial intelligence systems.
But some White House aides privately warned that Zuckerberg’s overtures had been being watched skeptically.
“There are people in the Trump orbit who want to extract pain from Zuckerberg,” one official advised The Post earlier this 12 months.
“But I don’t know that the case is going to go where they want it to go.”
