Facebook CEO’s Immigration Reform Group Donated To Trump’s Transition To “Curry Early Favor” With Administration

Latest Report Adds To Growing List Of Questionable Donations And Meetings With Conservatives

Written by Christopher Lewis

Published

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform lobby FWD.us, donated $5,000 to President Donald Trump’s transition according to a report from Politico.

Despite a contentious history opposing Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, the group donated to Trump “hoping to curry early favor and help shape the incoming administration.” From Politico:

But months later the nonprofit, founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a $5,000 check to Trump’s presidential transition — the latest indication that it’s still business as usual for the tech industry in Washington despite the revulsion many Silicon Valley engineers and executives feel toward Trump.

Hoping to curry early favor and help shape the incoming administration, FWD.us joined a handful of tech and telecom companies like AT&T, Microsoft and Qualcomm in funding Trump’s months-long transition operation, which raked in roughly $6.5 million through Feb. 15, according to a transition disclosure report filed last weekend and obtained by POLITICO on Thursday.

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FWD.us has had a fractious history with Trump and some of his top lieutenants, dating back to well before the election. Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. attorney general, blasted the group and its founder, Zuckerberg, in a blistering anti-immigration speech from the Senate floor in 2014. When Trump, as a candidate in 2015, detailed his immigration policy blueprint, Schulte described the approach as “just wrong.” While he didn’t mention Trump by name, the FWD.us founder took aim at “anti-immigrant voices” that seek to “forcibly expel millions of immigrants, period.”

Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have faced increasing criticism over their efforts to reach out to conservatives. Recently Facebook donated more than $120,000 to the American Conservative Union’s annual event the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  In 2016, Facebook met with conservative leaders to listen to their complaints of anti-conservative bias in Facebook’s trending topics feature. Facebook subsequently fired their human editors in August.