Joel Kaplan

Kaplan received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1991, after which he served as an Artillery Officer in the United States Marine Corps for four years. He received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1998. Afterwards, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig.[2]

He was an active conservative Democrat during the early 1990s.[7] He registered as a Republican in the late 1990s.[8]

Kaplan worked as a policy advisor on George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, during which he was a participant in the Brooks Brothers Riot.[9]

From 2001 to 2003 he was special assistant to the president for policy within the White House Chief of Staff’s office. Then he served as deputy director of the Office of Management And Budget (OMB), serving under Josh Bolten, who was OMB Director at the time. While at the OMB, in 2006, Kaplan said the administration would cut the deficit by half by 2009.[10]

In April 2006 he moved back to the White House as the deputy chief of staff for policy, taking over policy planning from Karl Rove as part of a staff shake-up by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. Blake Gottesman was the other Deputy Chief of Staff and focused on operations.[11] He was responsible for the development and implementation of the Administration’s policy agenda.

While in the Bush administration, Kaplan was seen as very close to Bolten.[12]

Prior to joining Facebook, Kaplan was the executive vice president for public policy and external affairs for Energy Future Holdings (EFH), where he oversaw company-wide public affairs and led EFH’s efforts to "publicly demonstrate and communicate its role in the energy industry".[13]

In May 2011 Facebook hired Kaplan as its vice president of U.S. public policy, as part of a Facebook's effort to "strengthen" the company's ties to Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.[14][15] In October 2014, Kaplan succeeded Marne Levine as Facebook's vice president of global public policy.[16]

He pushed against a proposed Facebook project that was intended to make Facebook users of different political views engage with each other in less hostile ways. Kaplan argued that this feature would lead conservatives to accuse Facebook of bias.[17][5] Kaplan also reportedly advocated on behalf of Breitbart News and the Daily Caller within Facebook.[5][6] Kaplan has helped to place conservatives in key positions in the leadership of Facebook.[3]

In 2018, he advocated strongly for the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.[18] Kaplan sat behind Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearings.[18]