One of the witnesses chosen by Democrats to make a case for the impeachment of President Trump will sit on a new Facebook board that will make binding decisions about what content is allowed on the social media platform.
Pamela Karlan, a Stanford University professor, is the co-director of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. She became a household name in 2019 during her testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee, where she testified in favor of Trump’s impeachment.
Facebook’s oversight board, unveiled Wednesday, will “review a select number of highly emblematic cases and determine if decisions were made in accordance with Facebook’s stated values and policies.”
The board also includes Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark, and John Samples, the vice president of the Cato Institute.
Karlan made headlines during her testimony for talking about Trump’s 13-year-old son, Barron.
“Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article 2 does not give him the power to do anything he wants, and I’ll just give you one example that shows you the difference between him and a king, which is, the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron,” she said.
First lady Melania Trump responded forcefully to her son’s involvement in his father’s impeachment hearings, writing, “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.”
Karlan apologized for involving Barron, saying, “I want to apologize for what I said earlier about the president’s son. It was wrong of me to do that. I wish the president would apologize, obviously, for the things that he has done that’s wrong but I do regret having said that.”
New York Times reporter Peter Baker suggested Karlan was a “full-throated, unapologetic liberal torchbearer” in a 2009 article. The professor was considered a possible candidate for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist.
