Whoa. A super late Fri night unsealed doc in lawsuit Facebook is trying to settle for record $700+ million. It includes this long-hidden Sep ’18 “Status and Re-scoped Approach” from the unprecedented audit Mark Zuckerberg promised Congress during Cambridge Analytica scandal. /1
https://x.com/jason_kint/status/1800175310950068499
Hey @PreetBharara @JoyceWhiteVance seems like a good non-Trump bit for the podcast. Happy to brief you, see thread below.
WIRED
Later that year, Kaplan would also help
someone else prepare for a congressional
grilling. In June, his old friend Brett
Kavanaugh was nominated to the
Supreme Court. Some in the company
knew about the two families’ close
relationship. (“We share our families,”
Kaplan’s wife, Laura, would say. “We
shared our kids’ bicycle crashes, their
broken bones.”) But Kaplan’s involvement
ran deeper than most realized. The night
before Justice Anthony Kennedy
announced his retirement, Kaplan
worked the phones in Washington’s
rarefied legal channels, whipping up
support for Kavanaugh, according to the
author Ruth Marcus. And around the time
Trump announced the nomination, the
Kavanaughs went over to stay at the
Kaplans’, two blocks away in Chevy
Chase, to avoid notice by the press.
It’s really hard to believe but not one single press report about the Facebook lawsuit that will go before the Supreme Court mentions that a Justice has been reported to be best friends with the senior Facebook executive at the heart of the scandal.
SCOTUS just posted order list. It granted cert to Facebook on its Cambridge Analytica matter. Only first question but that’s a huge one. Basically should Facebook have disclosed to shareholders what it started to cover up in 2015 rather than presenting risk as hypothetical?
https://x.com/jason_kint/status/1800175310950068499/photo/1
Here is the actual first question as written. One immediate item, it’s outrageous if Justice Kavanaugh didn’t/doesn’t recuse seeing his reported best friend, Joel Kaplan, was directly involved in the matter and its cover up. He threw his SCOTUS confirmation party IIRC. /2
https://x.com/jason_kint/status/1800175310950068499
It’s worth noting in lay terms this is all about when Facebook knew and its failure to inform the public. Even @aoc asked Zuckerberg directly about the timing and coverup during a 2019 hearing (QFRs were never publicly released). /5
And of course we later learned, there were a number of items of testimony that may have included perjury and certainly misleading the public including that FB immediately got a legal certification data was deleted or there was no ongoing risk. Should be interesting. /6