Former Facebook lawyer quits as Biden's staff secretary after just ten months in the job
Former Facebook associate general counsel Jessica Hertz is resigning from her prestigious position as White House staff secretary.
Hertz will leave her post 'in the coming days,' according to two anonymous sources speaking to Politico on Tuesday.
Reasons for her departure and her replacement have yet to be unveiled.
It came just days after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before Congress on a broad range of issues, including the negative impact of social media on users' mental health.
Whoever replaces Hertz as White House staff secretary will control most paperwork that reaches President Biden's office.
Hertz previously worked for two years and three months as Facebook's associate general counsel for regulatory issues.
She left the social media giant in June 2020 to serve as general counsel of the Biden presidential transition team.
Jessica Hertz will have served under the Biden administration as Staff Secretary for a little more than a year after her appointment in June 2020
She previously served as a Special Assistant Attorney in his vice presidential office from 2012-2014, according to her LinkedIn.
Hertz started her career in politics while serving under the Obama administration, as counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, before joining the Justice Department.
The Staff Secretary in the White House Office is a high-profile role, responsible for managing paper flow to the President and circulating documents among senior staff for comment.
Hertz is one of the first senior White House staffers to leave the Biden administration, which hasn't even hit its ten-month mark yet.
The White House will be on a hunt to replace Hertz but has so far declined to comment on her resignation and her replacement
However, Hertz has kept out of the public eye and was rarely spotted by reporters.
She is one of the first senior White House staffers to leave the administration, which hasn't even hit its ten-month mark yet.
Described by White House colleagues as 'easy to work with' and 'very talented at her job', Hertz studied art history and French literature at Harvard and earned a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.
Her resignation comes shortly after a self-professed Facebook whistleblower, former product manager Frances Haugen, testified in front of Congress last week, claiming that the company prioritizes profit over the mental health of users, including minors.
Haugen spoke to a Senate subcommittee after leaking tens of thousands of internal documents. Following the testimony, there appeared to be bipartisan support for action to protect children online.
In her testimony, Haugen said that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is only 'accountable to himself' and has even been directly involved in company decisions that saw Facebook putting profit over 'changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation, hate speech and other inciting content.
Her claims were devastating for Facebook's public image and prompted multiple senators to attack Zuckerberg - who Haugen alleges knew of and encouraged his site's harmful practices.
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testified before Senate Subcommittee last week on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security during a hearing about Facebook File: Protecting Kids Online
She said that executives were aware that Facebook and Instagram were harmful for children, with a leaked internal study revealing that teenage girls had increased suicidal thoughts from using Instagram.
She said that Facebook's algorithms, centered around 'likes' and 'shares', rewarded 'dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people.'
Haugen's accusations were supported by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company's civic integrity unit.
The tech giant attempted to discredit Haugen after she testified, saying that the data scientist never attended meetings with top executives and that she was wildly misinformed about the company.
Zuckerberg wrote in an open letter to his staff: 'I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted.'
Facebook's director of policy communications, Lena Pietsch, responded to Haugen's testimony by pointing out she worked at the company for less than two years.
Pietsch added that Haugen 'had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives - and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.'
Republicans have backed legal reforms for social media, citing Facebook and Twitter covering up reports, including ones written by Dailymail.com, last year on Hunter Biden links with his presidential father's business relationships in China and Ukraine.
Democrats, including Biden, have been pushing for reforms on laws that impact Big Tech, including Amazon and Apple.
High-profile former White House staff secretaries include Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and failed Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, who both served under President George W. Bush.
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