By Mary Clare Jalonick & Barbara Ortutay
WASHINGTON (AP) --A Senate committee has issued bipartisan subpoenas to the CEOs of Discord, Snap and X, demanding that the heads of the three companies testify at a December hearing on protecting children online.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the panel, announced Monday that they had issued the subpoenas to Discord CEO Jason Citron, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, "after repeated refusals to appear" during weeks of negotiations.
"Big Tech's failure to police itself at the expense of our kids cannot go unanswered," the two senators said in a statement about the Dec. 6 hearing, which will focus on child sexual exploitation online.
The committee said that "in a remarkable departure from typical practice," Discord and X refused to accept service of the subpoenas and the panel was forced to enlist the U.S. Marshals Service to personally subpoena the CEOs.
In response to the subpoenas, all three companies said that they will work with the committee. But none committed to the Dec. 6 hearing.
"Snap's CEO has already agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and our team is coordinating with committee staff on potential dates," Snap said in a statement.
Discord said that "keeping our users safe, especially young people, is central to everything we do at Discord. We have been actively engaging with the committee on how we can best contribute to this important industry discussion.""
Wifredo Fernandez, the head of U.S. and Canada government affairs at X, said in a statement that the company has been working "in good faith" to participate because safety is the company's top priority. "Today we are communicating our updated availability to participate in a hearing on this important issue," Fernandez said.
Durbin and Graham said the committee remains in discussions with both Meta and TikTok and expects their CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Zi Chew, to testify voluntarily.
Social media companies have faced criticism from lawmakers, regulators and the public for harms their platforms cause to children and teenagers. Most recently, Meta was sued by 41 states and Washington, D.C. for contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict teenagers to the platforms.
Ortutay reported from San Francisco.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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