Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg have not spoken publicly about the Cambridge Analytica controversy. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Congress to Facebook: Send us Zuckerberg

Lawmakers are demanding to hear directly from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg on the growing controversy over the misuse of its data by Trump-linked Cambridge Analytica, as the social network confronts its most serious political crisis ever in Washington.

For now, the company is sending lower-level staffers to brief a half-dozen congressional committees about how data on more than 50 million users ended up in the hands of Cambridge during the 2016 campaign. But Facebook's Washington, D.C., troubles show no signs of abating amid news that the FTC has opened a data-privacy investigation into the company and as its stock price takes yet another hit.


Several lawmakers want top Facebook executives to testify — with some Republicans joining Democrats’ criticism of the onetime Capitol Hill darling. Some said it’s just a matter of time before Zuckerberg, the company’s hoodie-wearing CEO and founder, or Sandberg, the chief operating officer and “Lean In” author, have to explain themselves to Congress.

"I want to know why this happened, and what’s the extent of the damage, and how they’re going to fix it moving forward," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Tuesday when asked about the briefings. Facebook executives, she added, "aren’t coming yet, but they better come."

"Eventually, Mark Zuckerberg needs to testify; he needs to be subpoenaed if he won’t do it voluntarily," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who had urged the FTC to investigate the affair. "They can begin with some staff people, but it’s only the beginning."

Having Zuckerberg testify would be “helpful,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), adding: “We need to understand how they use the data that they mine from users, their personal information. … This is a growing problem, whether it’s people like political consulting firms using it, or foreign governments using it.”

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Facebook said its staffers will brief the Intelligence, Commerce and Judiciary committees in both chambers this week.

Democrats on those panels have been especially vocal in criticizing the company for allowing Cambridge Analytica, a firm connected to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and the Mercer family, to compile and keep a cache of data drawn from the social media profiles of some 50 million Americans, in what Facebook has called a violation of its own policies.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said after the election that the data analysis was key to the president’s victory, telling Forbes that “Facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences” — although Trump’s team is now downplaying the importance of Cambridge Analytica’s work.

The social network has already faced more than a year of blowback and congressional inquiries over fake news and Russian election meddling on its platform before the election. But the latest uproar is pushing Facebook into a new type of political peril, angering Democrats who until now had been among the company’s staunchest allies in Washington, just seven months before the midterm elections that could put them back in control on the Hill.

Facebook also has a strongly liberal workforce and has had an awkward relationship, at best, with the social-media-savvy president. Zuckerberg, long suspected of having White House ambitions himself, has been especially vocal about pushing an open immigration policy at odds with Trump’s agenda.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg have not spoken publicly about the Cambridge Analytica controversy, and they did not attend an internal employee question-and-answer session about the issue on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

The company's problems appeared to deepen Monday after reports that its chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, will leave the company over internal conflicts about its approach to curbing Russian misinformation. Both Facebook and Stamos declined to address that issue directly, other than saying he remains engaged with his work.

Despite the bipartisan uproar, key Republicans are still mulling over how much they want to make an issue of the Facebook flap. Asked Tuesday whether he intends to summon Zuckerberg, Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) said, "We'll see."

"We’ve got a questionnaire they’re responding to and then a staff briefing, and then we’ll make a decision based on that. But I would say it’s not outside the realm of possibility," Thune said.

Over in the House, Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who detailed Cambridge Analytica's alleged misuse of the Facebook data, will meet with Intelligence Committee Democrats to discuss the situation, his attorney, Tamsin Allen, confirmed Tuesday. The panel's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, had invited Wylie to brief his members earlier this week.

Separately, the FTC opened an investigation of Facebook and plans to send it a series of questions about the Cambridge Analytica situation, according to a source familiar with the matter. Under a 2011 consent decree with the FTC, Facebook agreed to get express permission and notify users before sharing their data with third parties.

The agency declined to comment on whether it's investigating but said, "We take any allegations of violations of our consent decrees very seriously as we did in 2012 in a privacy case involving Google.”

David Vladeck, the former director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau at the time the settlement was reached, told POLITICO the agency isn’t sending "a 'Dear Facebook’ letter — ‘How are you? We’ve missed you.’ This will be, ‘We want a lot of information from you and we want it now.’”

If Facebook violated the decree, it could be fined up to $40,000 for each person whose data were shared improperly. That amounts to a staggering sum — $2 trillion — if reports prove true that data from 50 million users were compromised.

“They're looking at both an enormous reputation hit, but there's also the possibility of a significant financial penalty,” Vladeck said.

Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman became the latest state AG to launch a probe of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica situation. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are also looking into the matter.

Cambridge Analytica, which did voter analysis work for the Trump campaign, obtained the Facebook account information from academic Aleksandr Kogan, who had developed an app that harvested Facebook data for research. Facebook has said about 270,000 people downloaded the app, but it acknowledged that Facebook’s privacy practices at the time would have allowed Kogan to obtain data on their friends as well.

Following news reports in The New York Times and The Observer that Cambridge had obtained information on 50 million Facebook users through the arrangement, and that some of the data might still be in Cambridge's possession, the social network announced it has suspended both Cambridge Analytica and Kogan as it looks into the matter.

“We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information. We appreciate the opportunity to answer questions the FTC may have," Rob Sherman, Facebook's deputy chief privacy officer, said in a statement.

John Hendel, Li Zhou and Steven Overly contributed to this report.