Former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant during a trip to Europe and urged her to “come to bed” during a private jet flight on the way home, according to an explosive new memoir.
The bombshell claims were made in a book published by Sarah Wynn-Williams (pictured above), a former Facebook employee who wrote about the six years she spent at the tech giant in a book titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
During a long drive through Europe, Sandberg and her 26-year-old assistant took turns sleeping in each other’s laps and stroking each other’s hair, Wynn-Williams alleged in the explosive tell-all.
During the trip, Sandberg instructed Wynn-Williams to purchase lingerie for both of them, regardless of cost. The final bill for underwear reached $13,000, according to a book review published on Monday, March 10, by the New York Times .
According to the book review, a pajama-clad Sandberg grew visibly irritated when Wynn-Williams declined her offer to join her in “the only bed on the plane” during a flight home on a private jet.
Sandberg
Williams left the company in 2017, before it rebranded into Meta.
“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson told The Post.
“Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment.”
The spokesperson added that “since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work.”
“Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books,” the Meta spokesperson said.
Wynn-Williams also recalls Facebook’s top policy executive, Joel Kaplan, engaging in behavior that made her deeply uncomfortable, according to the review.
Kaplan, a former Marine and ex-boyfriend of Sandberg’s from Harvard, served as Facebook’s vice president of US policy before becoming vice president of global policy — and ultimately Wynn-Williams’ boss.
Kaplan, a conservative operative with deep ties to Republican politics, once pressed against her on the dance floor at a work event, commenting that she looked “sultry” and making unsettling remarks about her husband, Wynn-Williams wrote in the book.
When she nearly d!ed from an amniotic fluid embolism while giving birth to her second child, Kaplan continued to email her throughout her maternity leave, insisting on weekly videoconferences, it was claimed.
Even after she explained that she required additional surgery because she was still bleeding, Kaplan reportedly pressed her: “But where are you bleeding from?”
An internal Facebook investigation ultimately cleared Kaplan of any wrongdoing, according to the Times’ review of the book.
The company’s investigation into the claims spanned 42 days during which 17 different witnesses were interviewed, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Sarah Feinberg, a former Meta employee, took to the social media platform Threads to defend her ex-employer and Kaplan.
“I left Facebook/Meta more than a decade ago to return to government service, so it’s been a minute … but this book overlaps with all of my years there, and the author was one of my colleagues. While everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion and their own experience, I do not recognize this account of the company, its leaders, or my time there,” Feinberg wrote on Threads.
Feinberg added that she “was present for a lot of these events – and I worked on some of these projects – and these descriptions are just not even close.”
She also defended Kaplan, writing: “I worked with Joel Kaplan throughout my years at Facebook – he was one of my closest colleagues – and I have never observed him be anything other than professional, thoughtful, strategic and fair.”
Meanwhile, Wynn-Williams describes CEO Mark Zuckerberg as someone who transitioned from being fixated on coding and engineering to an executive consumed by politics and public adoration, according to the Times.
While on a tour of Asia, Wynn-Williams was instructed to arrange for a crowd of over a million people to ensure he was “gently mobbed” while on a trip to Indonesia, it was claimed.
At one point, he told Wynn-Williams that President Andrew Jackson, known for signing the Indian Removal Act into law, was the greatest US chief executive because he “got stuff done.”
Wynn-Williams’ memoir was kept under wraps by the publisher until just days before its release on Tuesday.
She offered a scathing insider account of the company’s leaders, portraying them as power-hungry, irresponsible and indifferent to the consequences of their actions.
In the book, Wynn-Williams likened Zuckerberg and Sandberg to the “careless people” from “The Great Gatsby,” smashing things and leaving others to deal with the fallout.
The book also detailed Facebook’s secretive attempts to re-enter the Chinese market through a project called “Aldrin,” which involved partnerships, censorship tools and data-sharing proposals.
According to Wynn-Williams, Zuckerberg looked to ingratiate himself with the Chinese Communist Party.
Those efforts included “providing briefings to CCP officials on new technologies like artificial intelligence, developing bespoke censorship tools with the CCP, and making efforts to hide Meta’s cooperation with the CCP from the United States Congress.”
