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This Week's Updates:
House Republicans Intervene in Leonard Leo Investigation
Earlier this week, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH-4) and James Comer (R-KY-1) wrote a letter to DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb demanding that he hand over communications related to his office’s investigation of Leonard Leo – the conservative fundraiser who shaped President Trump’s Supreme Court and controls over a billion dollars in donor cash. According to Politico, Schwalb is investigating Leo’s network of organizations for potential violations of nonprofit law related to personal enrichment, as previous reporting revealed an abrupt change in Leo’s spending habits following an infusion of funding into his tax-exempt organizations.
Back in April, CfA urged both Schwalb and the IRS to investigate seven nonprofits which appeared to have funneled millions of dollars to Leo – a possible violation of the agency’s rules against private inurement. CfA laid out how these organizations directly or indirectly paid Leo a total of $73 million from 2016 to 2020, despite his full-time employment at the Federalist Society. An attorney for Leo confirmed that he was being investigated by Schwalb’s office, but claimed that the case had no merit because some of Leo’s organizations were registered outside of DC. As Politico’s Heidi Przybyla points out, though, Leo’s private consulting firm and one of his primary nonprofits are still based in the District, and therefore fall under Schwalb’s jurisdiction.
Senate Judiciary Committee to Subpoena Supreme Court Power Players
On Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced that he would be perusing subpoenas for Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, and Robin Arkley II – all of whom appear to be involved with organizing or financing luxurious gifts for conservative Supreme Court justices. Judiciary Ranking Member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has vowed to oppose the subpoenas, which cannot be enforced with the support of at least 60 senators. Efforts to voluntarily extract information from Crow, Leo, and Arkley have been fruitless, according to a statement from Sen. Durbin. Though the subpoenas are unlikely to move forward, they do draw attention to the issue of ethics at the court, and could deter future overtures from wealthy individuals with business before the justices.
New Meta Whistleblower Set to Testify Before Senate
Last night, the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell report on Meta’s failure to protect teen users from bullying, sexual harassment, and harmful content – all issues that former Meta employee Arturo Béjar worked to combat as a member of the company’s Wellbeing team. Now, he has come forward as a whistleblower, and has told the WSJ that he does not believe Meta is capable of change from within. Béjar also consulted with the state attorneys general who sued Meta last month – a previous TTP newsletter examined his testimony, as well as an earlier interview in which he described the working environment he experienced at Facebook. The WSJ reports that Béjar will testify in a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing next Tuesday.
The hearing agenda has yet to be released, but the proceedings will likely build on earlier hearings regarding social media reform and platform accountability, which both had technology companies on the defensive. Béjar’s testimony in the state lawsuits has already contained some heavy accusations; he told Vermont officials that he believed Meta had adopted “prevalence” metrics to deliberately manipulate public perception, because they obscured the true frequency of harmful content and created a distorted image of safety.
The states’ complaints focus on recommendation algorithms used by Meta, which are designed to drive user engagement and maximize ad revenue with little regard for wellbeing. Interestingly, YouTube announced on Thursday that it would be changing its algorithms to avoid recommending content to teens that “idealizes unhealthy standards or behaviors” – something that Meta was also accused of in the states’ lawsuits. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-MA), who will be chairing the Senate Judiciary Hearing, has been deeply critical of Meta and the role its algorithms have played in driving eating disorders. In 2021, Blumenthal’s office created a fake Instagram account for a 13-year-old girl who was interested in dieting and weight loss. Almost immediately, Instagram began recommending content that promoted disordered eating. “Meta had ample chances to clean up its act,” Blumenthal wrote on X last night. “Instead it backtracked on its commitment & misled Congress. The lesson is Big Tech won’t reform itself.”
