Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg secretly met with Attorney General Pam Bondi in the spring to seek her advice on how to approach President Trump about his company’s growing legal troubles, according to a new book.
The meeting, which took place March 12 at the Department of Justice, came just hours before Zuckerberg sat down with Trump at the White House, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl wrote in his new book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.”
Zuckerberg asked Bondi for guidance on how to “effectively speak” to the president about “Meta’s concerns,” according to an excerpt cited by Business Insider.
It’s not clear what advice Bondi gave the techie.
Neither Meta nor the Justice Department offered comment on the meeting when reached by The Post.
The conversation happened only weeks before the Federal Trade Commission opened its long-anticipated antitrust trial against Meta — a case that could force Zuckerberg to break apart his social media empire by spinning off Instagram and WhatsApp.
The government’s lawsuit, first filed during Trump’s first term, accuses Meta of buying rivals to crush competition in social media.
A federal judge has yet to rule on whether Meta violated antitrust laws.
Since Trump’s return to power, Zuckerberg has visited Washington, DC, several times, often turning up at high-profile White House events alongside other tech moguls.
The CEO’s charm offensive has unfolded as Meta faces multiple fronts of pressure from Washington regulators and European authorities.
The FTC has accused Meta of stifling competition, while the European Union is preparing steep fines under its Digital Markets Act targeting US tech firms for alleged anticompetitive practices.
Earlier this year, The Post reported that Zuckerberg had personally lobbied senior Trump aides to settle the FTC case before trial.
He has made at least three known trips to the White House since Trump’s inauguration and met privately with top officials, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief Stephen Miller, according to sources familiar with the visits.
In one of those meetings, Trump praised Meta’s plans to invest $50 billion in a Louisiana data center to power its artificial intelligence systems.
But some White House aides privately warned that Zuckerberg’s overtures were being watched skeptically.
“There are people in the Trump orbit who want to extract pain from Zuckerberg,” one official told The Post earlier this year.
“But I don’t know that the case is going to go where they want it to go.”
