Analysis from bret baeir. We this is a big deal, congressman. Really since 19967 in the Telecommunications Act of that year which was big sweeping changes, the committee hasnt tackled anything this big since then. How do you plan to focus 31 members tomorrow to try to get the questions you want answered at that hearing . Thats just on the republican side. Its a big committee. Its bigger than just facebook. How people profit from your personal data goes well beyond facebook. Well be looking at this over time. But tomorrow it is about facebook. It is about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of this great innovative company. But what happened along the way . What were peoples expectations . What were the agreements . Did they keep their side of the bargain . These are the trust questions i think American Consumers have. Our job is to put consumers first and make sure these Big Companies do what they say they were going to do. If not, did they find the tune or need for some sort of Public Policy involvement here. Dana sir, last week when i headed to facebook to interview Sheryl Sandberg, i talked to many people from many walks of life. What i realized is there are many people who are very angry at facebook, but none of them seem to be mad at facebook for the same reason. Is there something youre particularly looking to get tomorrow that will help focus the mind on any particular type of legislation or recommendation you think is necessary . I think its about transparency and accountability. Thats how you build trust. When it comes to Online Platforms such as facebook, what was their transparency regarding how they would use your data, by the way, not their data. And did they follow it . Are they accountable . Are they accountable to the agreement they reached back in 2011 with the federal trade commission when there were issues about data, data security, data usage. Did they follow the terms and conditions . By the way, does anybody read those Little Things that say, i agree to all the principles and multipages of legal ease about what they can and cant do . I think consumers are left in the dark about what happens with their data until Something Like this happens where a violation of public trust occurs. Thats our job then to get to the facts, get to the truth, then come to a decision about what kind of Public Policy changes need to be made, if any. Dana im sure youre familiar that a lot of republicans and conservatives are fed up with facebook. They think theres a bias against them. Especially when it came to the new algorithm they put into place. What can face the book do to rebuild that trust . Thats a big question. You go back to the organizing for america, obama 2012 campaign. The way they used that data i think in an unprecedented fashion. Now facebook changed its policies after that, but not before president obama kwraoudz all the data. Probably still has it. And then you look at the algorithm theyre using. They should be based on First Amendment free speech rights. Thats a question well have for Mark Zuckerberg. And so these are the issues of our day. Are they a common carrier in the Information Age . Are they a digital platform that just provides a Wonderful Service for free . Or is it really for free, given that they monetize the data. Theres an exchange that occurs here. Are consumers fully informed about that exchange and are they playing by the rules they set. Dana Mark Zuckerberg was on the hill the past couple days trying to assuage some fears, members of congress, in terms of what facebook is planning to do. Hes apologizing up one side down another. This just posted from him on his own facebook page. He said in an hour im going to testify in front of the senate about how facebook needs to take a broader view of our responsibility, not just to build tools, but to make sure those tools are used for good. I will do everything i can to make facebook a place for everyone to stay closer to the people they care about and make sure it is a positive force in the world. One thing they always say, i know you have a busy day. Facebook always says its very idealistic and optimistic type of company. But is that about to meet with some real cynicism from members of congress . Look, dana, this companys been around not 15 days, but 15 years. It has 2 billion users. Its one of the biggest economic engines in the social media world. In fact, in the whole technology world. So you cant just say, oh, im i dealistic and i made a mistake. I do think hes being smart. The buck does stop with him. Hes created an incredible platform thats changed the world and connected people. But with that comes enormous responsibility on a company of that size to do what it says its going to do. Follow the rules, follow the law, do what it says it will do to help consumers. Remember, the lens is bigger than just facebook. Lot of other companies out there engaged in actions that consumers are concerned about. Dana will you be asking Companies Like twitter and google to come testify, too . I think there are issues that come to our attention from our consumers, our voters, about those companies as well. Were not ruling it out. Dana all right. Congressman greg walden, thank you. Thank you, dana. Dana as we wait for Mark Zuckerbergs testimony, lets bring in the anchor of special report. This hearing was really going to take up a lot of the time and attention of the week. I want to get to the other issues. Before i do that, let me ask you what the feeling is like down there, in terms of Mark Zuckerberg testifying for the first time in front of congress. Dana, i cover a lot of hearings on capitol hill. There hasnt been this kind of line to get into a hearing for quite some time. Im talking big hearings that were much anticipated. This seems to be generating a lot of attention and a lot of focus of not only lawmakers but those who cover capitol hill. I think the real take away, and you talked about this with congressman walden, is what does regulation of social media, of facebook and others look like . If thats the case, if thats the road that congress is going down, you know, were opening up a whole new door here about regulation of the internet. I think that theres going to be a lot of back and forth about what the end product looks like, if thats what happens. Dana if we know anything, its washington moves a lot more slowly than technology. Were taking a look at that line of people trying to get in for this hearing. You can watch it live here on fox news soon as it starts. Chuck grassley, not only chair phaofpbt judiciary committee, who is talking about facebook, but he also spoke with Maria Bartaroma about the other big news. That is in regard to the investigation of Robert Mueller, the raid yesterday of the president s attorney, Michael Cohen. Listen to what he said to maria this morning. I have confidence in mueller. The president ought to have confidence in mueller. And i think to answer your question, it would be suicide for the president to want to talk ab firing mueller. The president always said on this whole thing the better off he would be, the stronger his presidency would be, and i think that maybe mueller coming to a dead end, as far as collusion of the trump with russia in this election. Dana bret, lot of people try to reach President Trump through their appearances on television. What do you think President Trump hears when he hears all these people think he should not fire mueller, but it is within his power to do so. Right. I think there are a lot of senators warning about that. There are some saying theyre not concerned that hes going to go down that road because he knows the consequences of that. Heres the thing. We dont know what we dont know about the mueller investigation. Its being reported that the raid on Michael Cohens office was in regard to payments of hush money payments and possibly some inquiry into the National Enquirer and how that played into free election activities that cohen took place in. We dont know the tie, if there is one torque the mueller investigation. Its being reported that the attorney, the u. S. Attorney in the Southern District recused himself. Thats the trump guy. So here you have another recusal potentially just like the president has a problem with Jeff Sessions, the attorney generals recusal. I think we have a long way to go to get more facts about this particular raid, but clearly the signals from capitol hill are, dont fire mueller, it would cause a lot of problems. Dana mean time, theres also the story everyone is following with regard to reaction to syria and what might happen there. The president meeting with his military leadership yesterday, nikki haley, at the united nations. Pushing back against the use of chemical weapons against those innocent civilians. Do you hear anything more about what could possibly happen from our end today . I think that from that cabinet room where a lot of the focus was on the raid and his comments on mueller, the other thing that came out of it was there would be a decision within hours, possibly within the day, and that they are confident or have solid intelligence about who was behind that. Thats from President Trump. Since then, i have talked to various officials who feel like theres an increasing confidence that they know who was behind the Chemical Attacks and there are indications that theres some military move potentially in the next 24 to 48 hours. Dana can i ask you just on that, on the evidence that and what we might be able to find out about it. Im cautious because i know things are classified. But people are going to want some proof that it was the assad forces that did this. Is that what youre hearing, that there is that proving this . I have been invited to a couple background briefings so i think theyre probably getting it altogether. You know the drill. They brief anchors and reporters with what they can outside of the classified environment. In order to make the case firmly before some action happens. Dana its good to know that you were invited because we will invite you back here to tell us more about it. Thanks. Thanks. Dana Mark Zuckerberg just arriving on capitol hill. Our panel weighs in on the questions he can expect. Many of us on this committee have been raising this issue since the beginning of issues. Our claims were blown off by the leaderships of your companies. They know more about americans than the government. Theres little rest for a single dad. And back pain made it hard to sleep and get up on time. Then i found aleve pm. The only one to combine a safe sleep aid. Plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. Im back. Aleve pm for a better am. Dana a look inside the hearing room where Mark Zuckerberg is about to testify before a joint senate committee. With me wall street journal deputy Editorial Page EditorDan Henninger and shelby holiday, wall street journal senior video reporter and mark pence, chief Strategy Officer at microsoft and new book at microtrend squared. This is a day Mark Zuckerberg maybe knew that it would come, dan. That this would at some point it would happen. Day of reckoning for a company this size, 15 years old, would have to face the music. Listen to what they said on the today show. Hes 33 and has two children. We have to stop calling him a boy. Hes a billionaire who runs a major company. So i think this idea that we juvenilize these men from Silicon Valley is kind of ridiculous. Dana he has to face the music today. He is going to face the music for sure. I would agee with kara swisher to the extent that i sometimes think of Mark Zuckerberg as like the fellow who discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I mean, there he is sitting in his dorm room at Harvard University dreaming up facebook. Others could have come up with the same idea. He attached that to a technology called the internet. Next thing you know hes the sixth richest man in the world with 2 billion customers. I mean, theres something about the nature of this technology. Its power. That we have never seen before. And this one made Mark Zuckerberg extremely wealthy. Now he is sitting here in front of congress, supposedly to apologize and be contrite. In advance of this hearing id like to issue a little skepticism. What exactly is the problem that we are sitting here to discuss and hear about today . Is it privacy . Obviously its connected to cambridge analytics. Is the issue there was privacy compromised by individuals or is it that this was used by cambridge analytics and others to elect donald trump president , which is two separate issues. Dana shelby holiday, theres another issue and that is the sheer size of facebook and what kind of Company Facebook is. It was the startup darling of the world. But now theres questions because of its power as a news publisher, really, is it a Media Company . Listen to what Sheryl Sandberg had to say about that. Were working hard on this. People want Accurate Information on facebook and we want them to have Accurate Information. So what were doing is working with Third Party Fact checkers, everyone from the ap to weekly standard. We have people in all 50 states now ahead of the election. Our goal is to be a platform for all ideas. We are running a service that 2 billion people use. We work in a bipartisan way. Dana the sheer size and scope of this Company Leads you to believe the members of congress are probably going to ask them if facebook is too big. Thats a key question. The answer facebook has given to this question, are you a Media Company . Are you responsible for what happened on this platform has changed. They do not want to be the overfear of content. They didnt want to fact check. They didnt want to think their job was to police free speech. Now theyre hearing they do care about this and this is important. The value of facebook lies in trust. Users trust, they trust facebook to put their pictures up there. They trust facebook enough that they put their birthday and share things with their friends. Even messages to people they know. That trust falls apart. The model of facebook falls apart. So does the value of facebook. We all say theyre on the hot seat. This is a key moment. He didnt want to be here. Few weeks ago when he addressed Cambridge Analytica, he backed away from the idea that he was here. I did get an email from a venture capitalist. He said it is a hot seat but it is good to remind people what facebook stands for. I dont know if people will want to know how incredible a place facebook is. He has the opportunity to be the leader and to be the man, the responsible ceo leading this company, not the guy from his dorm room. Dana you had an op ed in the New York Times which you said social Media Distribution of news real and fake mushrooms. Government authorities neglected to give these changes the careful study they gave to tv and radio when those technologies were new. Despite its government roots in funding the internet has been treated like a private commercial network. Now is the time to reconsider that approach. And the point about trust. Theres an monmoth poll asking, is facebook doing enough to stop the spread of fake news, not doing enough at 69 . I know you know a lot about polling. How are they doing on that front . I think theyve gone very much on an apology tour as a strategy, quite different history seems to be repeating itself. I worked with bill gates when he was called before congress. Look, this is going to be i think a relatively tough setting for Mark Zuckerberg. Its one of the first times hes asked questions that are fully not in his control. There will be a number of cross currents here. I think interest in news, interest in Cambridge Analytica, interest in privacy, his advantages that no one has a clear kind of ability to develop questions. The public basically is in the dark about technology platforms. They dont understand what news is moved, how its moved, how much power there is in this data. The op ed, i say, look, you cant have facebook both be a common carrier and Media Company. Its got to choose. Probably, we should have channels who are really responsible for their content. That are promoted rather than facebook directly firing 20,000 people to act as sensors. Thats impressive. Dana im going to ask you to stick around with me. We are going to be right back. Much more on the testimony from Mark Zuckerberg. What he needs to tell people about the massive data scandal. Stick around. The pan will be here, too. Financial services right. But if thats not enough, we have more than 8000 allys looking out for one thing you. Call in the next ten minutes. And if thats not enough, well look after your every dollar. Put down the phone. And if thats not enough, well look after your every cent. Grab your wallet. beeping sound computer voice access denied. And if thats still not enough to help you save. Oh the new one well bring out the dogs. Mush dogs barking the old ones just fine well do anything, seriously anything, to help our customers. Thanks. Ally. Do it right. Managing blood sugar isnt a marathon. Its a series of smart choices. Like using glucerna to replace one meal or snack a day. Only glucerna has carbsteady. Unique blends of slowrelease carbs to help manage blood sugar. Every meal. Every craving. Its the choices you make when managing blood sugar that are the real victories. Glucerna. Everyday progress. You know whats not awesome . Gigspeed internet. When only certain people can get it. Lets fix that. Lets give this guy gig really . And these kids, and these guys, him, ah. Oh hello. That lady, these houses yes, yes and yes. And dont forget about them. Uh huh, sure. Still yes xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. Now you can get it, too. Welcome to the party. Dana fox news alert as we await the testimony of Mark Zuckerberg in the wake of his companys privacy scandal. Chief Congressional Correspondent mike emanuel is live on capitol hill. Mike, what is the prep work like for these lawmakers heading into a high profile hearing with limited time in the spotlight . Reporter its pretty intense is what im told. They have very limited time. Im told there are conversations and Conference Calls between the senator, issue experts on staff and the Communications Team about possible areas they could ebbing phror with questioning. Lawmakers are then provided with background packets from the team about the various issues they could ebbing phror. Some suggesting today just the first start of congressional oversight. Facebook has taken steps to their platform. I think the senate and the congress is going to need to have a series of hearings and to act to strengthen privacy. Reporter this is the first time Mark Zuckerberg has testified on capitol hill. Lawmakers hear a lot of questions about a particular area, they could quickly shift to another area of interest. Lot of ground to cover here this afternoon, dana. Dana the do the senators need ahead of time or do they get to do whatever they want . Reporter in some cases im told they do meet to try avoid a whole lot of overlap. I dont know if they did ahead of this one. Youve got 40 or so senators between the two committees that will be questioning him this afternoon. Bottom line im reminded that a lot of the members of the Senate Judiciary panel are attorneys, so they intend to listen very carefully to what their colleagues ask and either dig deeper with their questions or perhaps shift on the fly. Some are questioning whether this is basically a time that congress men add regulation. I come in peace. I dont want to have to regulate facebook. Clearly though we have a problem. The digital promise land has some mine fields in it. One of those mine fields is the protection of peoples privacy. I want to hear three words from mr. Zuckerberg. Im on it. Reporter the stakes are incredibly high for Mark Zuckerberg. A poor performance could hurt share prices. But could invite the government into his business. Dana thank you. Lets bring back our panel. Dan, shelby and mark. One of the things, dan, that i wanted to ask about is something that was written about in the New York Times today. He said, the reality is that when it comes to privacy, the trade off has already been made. We decided long ago to give away our personal information in exchange for free content and the ability to interact seamlessly with others. Politicians can scream from the roof tops about privacy and they should, but the public has proved over and over again that it doesnt care. Dan, i think he was pointing to also, with breaches of security when it comes to airlines or credit card companies. It really is not that big of a factor in hurting those businesses because consumers keep going back. Well, i essentially agree with his analysis. By and large, people dont care. Lets go to the beginning of this problem with facebook and Cambridge Analytica. It was supposed by when a cambridge researcher solicited and made an app in which he solicited people to contribute their psychology profiles. Do you know how many people submitted that information to him . 300,000. An extraordinary number. That information was then shared extensively to their associates, their friends and so forth. That was essentially what was stolen by Cambridge Analytica. The fact is, most people i think are pretty happy with the product theyre getting from social media and from facebook. If they were more concerned about their privacy, we would have had a problem long before this. Im more concerned by what we also eluded to, which is the hacking of things like equifax or personnel management. That was 21 million very confidential files. The question is, has anything ever come of those hacks . Theyve got your Social Security number. But i have never seen any evidence that something bad has happened as a result. Dana panel, stay with me here. Mark zuckerberg has entered the hearing room. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, senator Chuck Grassley of iowa is there. We anticipate this will be one of those hearings that actually starts on time. I was trying to remember the last time such a big hearing took place. Dan and i were talking. Possibly the ben ghazi hearing when Hillary Clinton testified. Right now Mark Zuckerberg, his first time on capitol hill to testify. He spent most of the day yesterday meeting with members of the senate talking to them in advance of this testimony in which we know he is going to apologize. He has an Opening Statement that he released yesterday. Also, shelby holiday, one of the things i think hes going to ask about, youll see a big partisan divide. The democrats will be focused on the timeline as to when face book knew that russia was trying to meddle in the 2016 election through using facebook. Do you anticipate that as well . Yes. Huge question. What did zuckerberg know . When did he know it. If he knew it early, why wasnt he transparent with users . Theres a big debate about free speech. I spoke to a republican. He said congress doesnt feel like it needs to compel these social Media Companies to tell the public. It wants the social Media Companies to release information to the public. They have released information to congress. We dont necessarily know about it. Lot of americans have been left in the dark. Dana the senator there is trying to pound the gavel, telling everybody to get ready as he is about to turn this hearing over to Mark Zuckerberg for his Opening Statement after he is sworn in. Get all the cameras out of the way. Must be sort of strange, were talking about him in the dorm room getting ready and now the sixth richest man in the world. Well turn this over to senator Chuck Grassley. Social Media Privacy and the use and misuse of data. Though not unprecedented, this is a unique hearing. The issues we will consider range from data privacy and security to Consumer Protection and the federal trade Commission Enforcement touching on jurisdictions of these two committees. We have 44 members between our two committees. That may not seem like a large group by facebook standards, but it is significant here for a hearing in the United States senate. We will do our best to keep things moving efficiently, given our circumstances. We will begin with Opening Statements from the chairman and Ranking Members of each committee, starting with chairman thune and then proceed to mr. Zuckerbergs Opening Statement. We will then move onto questioning. Each member will have five minutes to question witnesses. Id like to remind the members of both committees that time limits will be and must be strictly enforced given the numbers that we have here today. If you are over your time chairman thune and i will make sure to let you know. There will not be a second round as well. Of course, there will be the usual followup written questions for the record. Questioning will alternate between majority and minority and between committees. We will proceed in order based on respecting committee seniority. We will anticipate a couple short breaks later in the afternoon, and so its my pleasure to recognize the chairman of the commerce committee, chairman thune, for his Opening Statement. Thank you, chairman grassley. Todays hearing is extraordinary. Extraordinary to hold a joint committee hearing. Its even more extraordinary to have a single ceo testify before nearly half of the United States senate. But then facebook is pretty extraordinary. More than 2 billion use facebook every month. 1. 4 billion people use it every day. More than the population of any country on earth except china. More than four times the population of the United States. Its also more than 1500 times the population of my home state of south dakota. Plus, roughly 45 of americans report getting some of their news from facebook. In many respects, facebooks incredible reach is why were here today. Were here because of what you, mr. Zuckerberg, have described as a breach of trust. Quiz app used by approximately 300,000 people led to information of 87 million facebook users being obtained by the Company Cambridge analytica. There are plenty of questions about the behavior of Cambridge Analytica. We expect to hold a future hearing on cambridge and similar firms. But as youve said, this is not likely to be an isolated incident. A fact demonstrated by facebooks suspension of another firm this weekend. You promised that when facebook discovers other apps that had access to large amounts of user data, you will ban them and tell those affected. And thats appropriate. But its unlikely to be enough for 2 billion facebook users. One reason that so many people are worried about this incident is what it says about how facebook works. The idea that for every person who decided to try an app, information about nearly 300 other people was scraped from your services, to put it mildly, disturbing. And the fact that those 87 Million People may have technically consented to making their Data Available doesnt make most people feel any better. The recent revelation and malicious actors were able to utilize facebooks privacy settings to match email addresses and phone numbers found on the socalled dark web to public facebook profiles, potentially affecting all face if book users, only adding fuel to the fire. What binds these two incidents is that they dont appear to be caused by the kind of negligence that allows typical data breaches to happen. Instead, they both appear to be the result of people exploiting the very tools that youve created to manipulate users information. I know facebook has taken several steps and intends to take more to address these issues. Nevertheless, some have warned that the actions facebook is taking to ensure that third parties dont obtain data from unsuspecting users, while necessary, will actually serve to enhance facebooks own ability to market such data exclusively. Most of us understand that whether youre using facebook or google or some other online services, we are trading certain information about ourselves for free or low Cost Services but for this model to persist, both sides of the bargain need to know the stakes that are involved. Right now im not convinced that facebooks users have the information that they need to make meaningful choices. The past, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been willing to defer the Tech Companies efforts to regulate themselves. But this may be changing. Just last month an overwhelming bipartisan fashion, congress voted to make it easier for prosecutors of victims to go after websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. This should be a wakeup call to the tech community. We want to hear more without delay about what facebook and other Companies Plan to do to take greater responsibility for what happens on their platforms. How will you protect users data . How will you inform users about the changes that you are making . And how do you intend to proactively stop harmful conduct instead of being forced to respond to it months or years later . Mr. Zuckerberg, in many ways you and the company you created, the story you created represent the american dream. Many are incredibly inspired by what youve done. At the same time, you have an obligation and its up to you, to ensure that that dream doesnt become a privacy nightmare for the scores of people who use facebook. This hearing is an opportunity to speak to those who believe in facebook and those who are deeply skeptical about it. We are listening. America is listening. And, quite possibly, the world is listening, too. Thank you. Now Ranking Member feinstein. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman, chairman grassley, chairman thune. Thank you both for holding this hearing. Mr. Zuckerberg, thank you for being here. You have a real opportunity this afternoon to lead the industry and demonstrate the meaningful commitment to protecting individual privacy. We have learned over the past few months and we learned a great deal thats alarming. Weve seen how foreign actors are abusing social media platforms, like facebook, to interfere in elections and take millions of americans personal information without their knowledge in order to manipulate Public Opinion and target individual voters. Specifically, on february 16th, special counsel mueller issued an indictment against the russia based Internet Research agency and 13 of its employees for interfering operations targeting the United States. Through this 37page indictment, we learned that the ira ran a coordinated campaign through 470 Facebook Accounts and pages. The campaign included ads and false information to create discord and harm secretary clintons campaign. And the content was seen by an estimated 157 million americans. A month later, on march 17th, news broke that Cambridge Analytica exploited the personal information of approximately 50 million facebook users without their knowledge or permission. And last week, we learned that number was even higher, 87 million facebook users who had their private information taken without their consent. Specifically using a personality quiz he created, professor cogan collected the personal information of 300,000 facebook users, and then collected data on millions of their friends. It appears the information collected included everything these individuals had on their facebook pages. And according to some reports, even included private direct messages between users. Professor cogan is said to have taken data from over 70 million americans. It is also been reported that he sold this data to Cambridge Analytica for 800,000. Cambridge analytica then took this data and created a psychological welfare tool to influence United States elections. In fact, the ceo, alexander nix, declared that Cambridge Analytica ran all the digital campaign, the Television Campaign dana we are going to continue to listen to Opening Statements, but in the mean time, Sarah Sanders, at the white house, just started her press briefing. I will turn it over to her. Im going to move on. Sorry. We were tight on time with those. Could you follow up on that question . I didnt hear it. The president has been clear. Hes addressed it several times. I dont have anything else to add. Could you just say definitively has the president had any conversation about firing Jeff Sessions or Robert Mueller in the past 24 hours . I havent had conversations with him on that. I cant speak on that. Sorry. Weve got to keep going. Hes calling it a witch hunt. Go ahead. Can you just answer the question. How can he call the raid yesterday a witch hunt when it was approved by the Deputy Attorney general he appointed . Once again im not aware of what the process is, if he signed off on those specific types of things. The president certainly has been very clear about what his position is when it comes to matters of collusion. Thats what his reference is. He thinks this entire thing is a witch hunt. Weve spoken about this at length and frankly think its a big distraction that the media has spent every single day for the last year focused on this instead of some of the biggest issues of our day and some of the biggest issues of the president dealing with like syria, like north korea, like deregulation, tax cuts, defeating isis. Thats the focus of this administration and frankly thats what you guys should spend a little bit more time on. Were gonna take you yielded your time to kristen. Ill come back to you for one. [ all talking at the same time ] you said that its a witch hunt. Youve continued to characterize it as that. In so much as this administration also has levelled sanctions against the 13 russians that were indicted by the mueller investigation, at some point are you party to this witch hunt or is some of it at least a legitimate effort . Just because there may have been involvement by russia doesnt mean there was involvement by the trump campaign. Then to try to conflate the two is insane. Thats not the question. Is somebody arguing supporting what theyve done. They indicted the people who you have left sanctions against. Weve been outspoken on a number of occasions that we think that russia was involved in election meddling and we take actions because of that. But that has nothing to do with whether or not the president and his campaign had anything to do with that. Im going to keep moving. I called on john before. Guys, one at a time. Go ahead, john. Thanks a lot, sarah. Crazy today. What is the nature of the president s relationship right now with attorney general Jeff Sessions . He really voiced his displeasure with him last evening in his charact remarks. Is it a Good Relationship . I think the president was pretty clear about his frustrations when he spoke about that last night. Real quick, sarah, if you dont mind. Its about the epa administrator. If it turns out that he lied in the interview he gave with fox news, my colleague ed henry, would that be problematic for him in terms of holding on to his job . Im not going to get into hypothetical situations. Certainly, the president would expect all members of his cabinet to be honest and certainly open with the public. Michael . So the president last night seemed to combine his reaction to the russia investigation, which weve heard him say before and this new investigation thrown out in new york, the raid on his attorney. Does he view that as one in the same investigation . In other words, does he think that falls under the umbrella of the special counsel or does he view the russia investigation as separate from the probe into the payments by these women that is kind of being conducted by the u. S. Attorneys office in new york . I think certainly that they are separate investigations, but i think that publicly they have been conflated quite a bit. Yes, sarah. Does the United States expect in response to the Syrian Chemical Weapons attack that other nations will join . Were seeing indications by france and the saudis that they may also take military action. We have had a number of conversations, both the president with President Trump macron, Prime Minister may and at various other levels, and were going to continue to work with a number of our partners and allies as we determine what the next best steps are. April . Sarah, two questions. The president said yesterday he was compliant. Turned over a million documents. If he was compliant with these investigations why was there a search warrant needed . This doesnt have anything to do with the president. I would refer you to Michael Cohen and his attorney. When it comes to matters of the special counsel and dealings with the president , weve been fully cooperative. Question, with all of this turmoil, particularly last week, has the president at any time thought about stepping down before or now . No. I think thats an absolutely ridiculous question. Were moving on. Jordan, go ahead. Thanks, sarah. Does the National Security adviser john bolton force tom foster out of a job . Im not going to get into specific details about on going personnel. He resigned. The president feels hes done a great job. Wishes him the best as he moves forward. President tweeted today about some of the promises that president xi has made toward market reforms in china. He said this before. Is this going to be enough to avert some of the tariffs the president has been talking about . We are encouraged by president xis words, kind words. But at the same time, we want to see concrete actions from china and were going to continue moving forward in the process and in negotiations until this happens. Has the president spoken with Michael Cohen . Not that im aware of. You said he believed he was crossing the line. Can you explain why these raids on his personal attorney is viewed by the president as crossing the line . I dont have anything else to add on that front right now. You said the president believes he has the power to fire Robert Mueller. Usually most legal experts believe he would have to order Rod Rosenstein to fire mueller. Rosenstein could refuse. I know a number of individuals in the Legal Community including at the department of justice that he has the power to do so. I dont have any further announcements on that. They said Rod Rosenstein, only he has the power to fire the special counsel. Again, weve been advised that the president certainly has the power to make that decision. I cant go into anything beyond that. Dave . British government said theyre still looking for confirmation that assad used chemical weapons last weekend. Is the president still looking for confirmation of that . I cant get into specific classified information, but i can tell you we feel confident in the comments that we made to this point. John . Thank you, sarah. Two questions with brevity on ambassador bolton. Well believe it when we see it. Could we expect any other changes of personnel in his family . I dont have any other Personnel Announcements to make at this time. The other question a year ago ambassador bolton was highly critical in an op ed page about u. S. Involvement with the world bank and the International Monetary fund. With the world bank imf meeting coming up within a matter of two weeks, is his position going to affect u. S. Support for either institution . I dont have any policy changes on that front at this time and dont expect any on that front. Thank you, sarah. Yesterday President Trump said something very interesting about syria. He said that because of the power of the United States and because of the power of our country, were able to stop it. With bringing in ambassador john boltton, which is a signal of a more stronger stance. I wonder if the president changed his stance on syria and whether or not he wants to send those troops very soon as he previously said. I addressed the troops yesterday. I dont have anything new on that front, in terms of things the president may or may not do, were not going to broadcast. And i dont have any announcements on that front. Thank you. This week [ inaudible ] do you consider that a major break through for the administration . Wed like to see them take on a lot more than six, but were certainly glad to see those six move forward. Wed like to see them move forward in a much bigger fashion than just the single digits. One other question. On the u. S. Attorney berman. Hes in an interim position in new york. Reports have been the president was going to nominate him full time. Is that still the case . Will the president nominate him . I dont have any Personnel Announcements on that front. So, all of the evidence so far in the syrian chemical attack reports to the use of chlorine gas. The assad regime has been suspected of using chlorine on the battlefield. What makes this particular attack different as far as the International Response and the potential use of lethal force that we are seeing from this president . I cant address specific intelligence matters, but i think everyone around the world can see these recent attacks are so horrific. To clarify your comment on president xi last night on cnn rhetoric around trade openness, are you saying the president didnt see anything in that speech that would encourage him to back off and address the tariffs from the chinese . Dana all right. Thats been Sarah Sanders at the White House Briefing room. Busy day on both ends of capitol hill and the white house. Lets now go to Mark Zuckerberg. He is about to make the oath. He will tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. The members of the senate, chairman and Ranking Members have been taking turns with their Opening Statements. Senator nelson is about to wrap that up now and then we will have Mark Zuckerberg giving his first testimony. There behind him joel kaplan and mariah jordan, who work for facebook and have been preparing mash zuckerberg. Lets turn it back over to senator grassley. Proceed, sir. Chairman grassley, chairman thune, Ranking Member feinstein, Ranking Member nelson, members of the committee, we face a number of important issues around privacy, safety and democracy. And you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to answer. Before i talk about the steps were taking to address them, i want to talk about how we got here. Facebook is an idealistic and opportunistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all of the good that connecting people can do and as facebook has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool for staying connected to the people they love, for making their voices hear and for Building Communities and businesses. Just recently, weve seen the me too movement and the march for our lives organized at least in part on facebook. After hurricane harvey, people came together to raise more than 20 million for relief. And more than 70 million Small Businesses use facebook to create jobs and grow. But its clear now that we didnt do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. And that goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didnt take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. And it was my mistake. And im sorry. I started facebook. I run it. Im responsible for what happens here. So now we have to go through all of our relationships with people and make sure that were taking a broad enough view of our responsibility. Its not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive. Not enough to just give people a voice. We need to make sure people arent using it to harm other people or to spread misinformation. Its not enough to just give people control over their information. We need to make sure that the developers they share it with protect their information, too. Across the board, we have a responsibility to not just build tools, but to make sure that theyre used for good. It will take some time to work through all the changes we need to make across the company, but im committed to getting this right. This includes the basic responsibility of protecting peoples information which we failed to do with Cambridge Analytica. So here are a few things that we are doing to address this and to prevent it from happening again. First, were getting to the bottom of exactly what Cambridge Analytica did and telling everyone affected. What we know now is that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed some information about millions of facebook members by buying it from an app developer. That information this was information that people generally shared publicly on their facebook pages, like names and the pages they follow. When we first contacted Cambridge Analytica, they told us that they deleted the data. About a month ago, we heard new reports that suggested that wasnt true. And now were working with governments in the u. S. , the u. K. And around the world to do a full audit of what theyve done and to make sure they get rid of any data they may still have. Second, to make sure no other App Developers throughout are misusing data, were now investigating every single app that had access to a large amount of information in the past. And if we find that someone improperly used data, were gonna ban them from facebook and tell everyone affected. Third, to pro vent this from ever happening again going forward, were making sure that developers cant access as much information now. The good news here is that we already made big changes to our platform in 2014 that would have prevented this specific situation with Cambridge Analytica from occurring again today. But theres more to do and you can find more details on the steps were taking in my written statement. My top priority has always been our social mission. Of connecting people, Building Community and bringing the world closer together. Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as i am running facebook. I started facebook when i was in college. Weve come a long way since then. We now serve more than 2 billion people around the world, and every day people use our services to stay connected with the people that matter to them most. I believe deeply in what we are doing. And i know that when we address these challenges, well look back helping people connect and getting more people a voice for the positive force in the world. I realize the issues were talking about today arent just issues for facebook and our community, theyre issues and challenges for all of us as americans. Thank you for having me here today. Im ready to take your questions. I will remind members that maybe werent here when i had my opening comments that we are operating under the fiveminute rule and that applies to the five minute rule and that applies to those of us who are chairing the committee as well. Family handles extensive amount of data for users. Significant amount is shared with third party who use your platform. As of early this year. Did you not actively monitor whether that data was transferred by such developers to other parties. Moreover, your policies only prohibit transfers by developers to parties seeking to profit from such data. Number one, besides professor kogans transfer and now potentially do you believe view. Do you know of any instances where user data was improperly transferred to third party in breach of facebooks terms . If so, how many times has that happened and was facebook only made aware of that transfer by some third party . Mr. Chairman, thank you. As i mentioned, were now conducting a full investigation into every single app. That had an access to a large amount of information before we locked down platform to prevent developer from accessing this information around 2014. We believe that were going to be investigating many apps. Tens of thousands of apps. If we find any suspicious activity, were going to conduct a full audit of those app. S to understand how they are using their data and if they are doing anything improper. If we find they are doing anything improper we will ban them from facebook and tell everyone