The lawyers for Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen also represented the whistleblower who gave testimony leading to the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
The story: Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit organization whose co-founder also represented the whistleblower behind Trump’s first impeachment, recently announced a GoFundMe to pay the legal fees for Frances Haugen’s battle with Facebook.
Mark Zaid, one of the non-profit’s founders, rose to prominence after acting as attorney on a number of high-profile whistleblower cases, including the whistleblower case that led to the first impeachment of Trump.
In a recent Twitter post, Zaid encouraged followers to donate to Haugen’s GoFundMe page.
Haugen entered headlines this week when she revealed in a 60 Minutes interview that she is the whistleblower who has been leaking Facebook information to reporters. Haugen also testified before Congress on Tuesday about harms posed by the way Facebook prioritizes profits over the well-being of its users.
On her website, she wrote that she “became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety and putting people’s lives at risk.”
In detail: In addition to Facebook, Haugen engineered ranking algorithms at other technology giants, including Yelp, Pinterest, and Google.
Before emerging as the Facebook whistleblower, Haugen spoke openly about other social issues prevalent in the technology world, such as gender inequality.
“You don’t see [women] in major tech companies, and when you do see them in major tech companies, you see them in places that are in support roles, like marketing or perhaps sales,” she stated in a 2015 presentation. “I think that’s a problem.”
According to The Daily Wire, Haugen has made upwards of twenty campaign contributions to Democrats, including contributions in 2020 to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Courage to Change” Political Action Committee.
The Washington Free Beacon also reported that Haugen is working with Bryson Gillette, a communications company led by Bill Burton, the former White House Deputy Press Secretary for President Barack Obama.
“It does have the appearance of being an incredibly well-orchestrated communications campaign,” said former director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Kevin McLaughlin.
Worth noting: For his part, Zaid indicated that he has no political bias, and though he represented the whistleblower behind the first Trump impeachment, he has also represented the conservative publication The Daily Caller, the Republican National Committee, as well as two Republican Congressmen.
“The partisans are trying to smear the legal team as some liberal opposition,” he wrote in a 2019 Twitter post. “We are anything but that. I’ve never been anything other than registered Independent & proud of it. We pursue the rule of law.”
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