The Senate Intelligence Committee has invited top Internet and social media leaders to appear at a hearing as part of their ongoing Russia probe, according to a new report.
Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, have confirmed they will appear before the committee in September, BuzzFeed News reported on Wednesday. However, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has yet to say whether he will attend.
[Related: Devin Nunes warns Google may need to testify if anti-GOP search results keep showing up]
According to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the hearing will occur the first week in September, following a preliminary hearing “probably next week.”
Google and Facebook did not respond to BuzzFeed’s request for comment, and Twitter claimed the company had no information to disclose.
[Also read: Twitter CEO shared 17 tweets from Russian troll accounts]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees and the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April, and policy experts from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
The upcoming hearings with the social media and Internet executives is part of the Senate panel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
The U.S. intelligence community that determined last year that Russia agents were responsible for interfering in the election and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned earlier this month that cyberthreats against the U.S. could harm elections in the future.
