Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said it was “startling” that a former operative of the Venezuelan government is employed at Facebook, in a comment to Breitbart News.
Earlier this week, Breitbart News reported that a former longtime operative of the Venezuelan government, who built a website to help propagandize for the socialist regime, is employed at Facebook.
The employee, Martin Sanchez, spoke at Trotskyist conferences in the U.S. prior to joining the tech giant.
“The fact that a Venezuelan socialist leads a key content classification team at Facebook should be startling to all who value our First Amendment rights,” said Sen. Blackburn in a comment to Breitbart News.
“People bring their personal experiences to work with them, and Sanchez spent much of his career advocating for ideals that are at odds with those of the United States. The American people have seen the devastation that was brought upon Venezuela by socialist policies, and do not want to see the U.S. face the same fate.”
Facebook did not respond to Breitbart’s request for comment on Sanchez, including a question about whether Sanchez is allowed any influence over decisions related to content that could impact U.S. elections.
Sanchez got his start in tech when he co-founded the website Aporrea.org, a pro-Chavez site, in 2002.
Venezuelan writer and Breitbart News contributor Christian K. Caruzo describes Aporrea as “one of the first, if not the first pro-Chavez website… Ground zero for Chavista stuff online. This was back before Facebook, Twitter.”
Despite alleged concerns about “foreign interference” related to U.S. elections on Facebook, the mainstream corporate media has paid scant attention to Sanchez’s presence at Facebook.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.