Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a private meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi at the Justice Department earlier this year seeking advice on how to talk to President Donald Trump, a new book claims.
The Facebook founder pressed Bondi for guidance on how to “effectively speak” to Trump about his company’s concerns during their sitdown on March 12, ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl writes in the forthcoming Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.
Zuckerberg was preparing for his own meeting with the president at the White House later that same day, which came almost exactly a month before a Federal Trade Commission antitrust case against Meta went to trial on April 14.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has yet to issue a ruling in the case, despite the trial drawing to a close in May. It could yet have major consequences for Zuckerberg’s company, which could ultimately be forced to spin off key assets like Instagram and WhatsApp to settle monopoly concerns.
The CEO previously met Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago shortly after his election win last November and reportedly returned again to Palm Beach in January.
He was also one of a number of Silicon Valley titans in attendance at Trump’s second inauguration ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in January, alongside the likes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk.
Zuckerberg subsequently committed an embarrassing blunder when he wandered into Trump’s Oval Office in July during a highly-classified meeting with Air Force leaders about the new F-47 stealth fighter jet and had to be asked, politely, to leave because he did not have the required security clearance.
His company has since pledged to invest at least $600 billion in the U.S. over the next three years, largely in data centers to help support the needs of the artificial intelligence sector, which Trump has made clear he views as an emerging industry in which America can be a world leader.
Meta is also among the list of private donors who have made a contribution to the president’s $350 million White House ballroom, which he has decimated the East Wing to accommodate.
Other tech firms that have made a sizeable donation in support of Trump’s project include Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft and, from the cryptocurrency sector, Coinbase, Ripple, and the Winklevoss Twins.
Zuckerberg has even bought a $23 million home near the White House in Washington, D.C., with a view to staying close to Trump.
Facebook has recently attracted criticism for bowing to Justice Department pressure to remove an anti-ICE group that allowed users to warn others about the location of immigration agents in Chicago, despite Zuckerberg pledging that the platform would not “compromise” its content standards under “pressure from any administration in either direction.”
