The Facebook official charged with investigating Russian entities that purchased political ads on the social media site during the 2016 presidential campaign donated large sums to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.
A Recode profile of chief security officer Alex Stamos published Tuesday describes him as "the man hunting down Russian political ads on Facebook."
"The 38-year-old security expert and his team are leading the company's internal investigation into Russian meddling, according to sources, which includes searching for Facebook posts and political ads tied to Russia or other foreign parties trying to sway the election," Recode reported.
Recode noted that Stamos will likely be the one who has to testify before congressional committees this fall on Russian efforts to spread misinformation through Facebook. What the outlet neglected to mention is that Stamos also donated to several members of said committees.
Public records show that Stamos gave $2,700 to California Sen. Kamala Harris in 2016 and $2,500 to New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich in 2017, both Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Stamos also donated four times for a total of $8,100 to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, since 2015.
Stamos donated twice at $2,700 a pop to Texas Republican Rep. William Hurd, also a member of the House Intelligence Committee. But generally his donations have favored Democrats, including $2,700 to the Clinton campaign, $1,000 to Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and $5,000 to the New Democrat Coalition PAC.
Before joining Facebook, Stamos served in the same role at Yahoo. Under his watch, Yahoo was the victim of the worst data breach in email history, with more than 500 million accounts compromised.