Facebook vice president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan, sat among federal judge Brett Kavanaugh’s supporters at yesterday’s Supreme Court nomination hearings. The company says he was there in a personal capacity and had no additional comment, USA Today reports.
Kaplan is a longtime friend of Kavanaugh and they worked together for former President George W. Bush. Kaplan attended Kavanaugh’s 2016 swearing-in as a federal judge on the federal Court of Appeals, and Kaplan’s wife, Laura Cox Kaplan, the creator and host of podcast She Said/She Said and a board member of companies and non-profits, has been tweeting in support of Kavanaugh. She told CNN, “It seems anyone can launch an allegation without corroboration or evidence and dismantle a person’s career and their life and the lives of their family members. This is wrong.”
Kaplan joined Facebook in 2011 and leads its Washington, D.C. lobbying office. He and other Facebook executives have been busy over the last year with hearings before U.S. and foreign governments, defending Facebook’s role in recent elections.
The Kavanaugh hearings have dominated American news this week, as Kavanaugh confronts allegations under oath by Palo Alto University and Stanford University psychologist Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school.