Former Cambridge Analytica staffer set to meet with Democrats on Capitol Hill
Former Cambridge Analytica staffer Christopher Wylie will is meeting with Democrats on Capitol Hill this week to discuss the company's collection of personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook accounts.
Wylie, who left the data firm in 2014, is meeting with Democratic lawmakers and staff on the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, following a recent appearance before British Parliament. Democrats say Republican committee members and staffers were invited to attend but declined.
Arriving Tuesday, Wylie said he would answer questions about "whatever they ask" about his work with Cambridge Analytica.
Republican aides on both committees did not respond to ABC News' request for comment.
In interviews with ABC News and other outlets, Wylie has criticized his former company's use of Facebook data and its work for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
The New York Times and Observer in London first reported that Cambridge Analytica had scraped data from the profiles of Facebook users and their friends using an application created by Russian-American researcher Aleksandr Kogan.
Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign have said the data obtained at that time was not used as part of that work the data firm did on behalf of the campaign. The company said it deleted the data at Facebook's request and never shared it with another party.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg recently appeared before Congress and acknowledged that Facebook was too slow to address concerns about third-party groups obtaining data without permission, and said Kogan improperly obtained data.
Kogan previously told ABC News that Wylie initially asked him to retool his application to give Cambridge Analytica access to the data from millions of Facebook users, and that lawyers with Cambridge Analytica's parent company said the app would not violate Facebook's rules.
The company, which has been suspended by Facebook, has blamed Kogan for violating Facebook's terms.
Appearing on "Good Morning America" on Monday, Kogan said he regretted his role in the scandal, but called Zuckerberg’s comments "misleading."
"The idea that this was a hack," Kogan said, "is flat-out wrong."
