Jim Jordan is treating Mark Zuckerberg like a piñata. Here’s why.

The long Republican campaign to paint Silicon Valley as anti-conservative will reach an apex in Congress on Thursday, as Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, seeks to admonish a single tech CEO: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Officially, the vote is a resolution to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress. Jordan says the company hasn’t complied with his investigation into claims of collusion between the Biden administration and tech platforms.

But Meta says it has handed over tens of thousands of documents to the committee and provided 10 voluntary interviews with current and former employees in the past seven months. Other tech platforms caught up in the investigation, including Google’s parent company Alphabet, have offered similar compliance without facing the threat of a contempt vote.

In an interview, Jordan said Meta hasn’t coughed up the kind of documents he wants: “We want the internal communications, like we got in the Twitter files — like we got from Twitter — which show the communications they were having inside the company about what the government was pressuring them and encouraging them to do,” Jordan said.

But political and industry observers see it differently: as a piece of political theater waged against the most powerful social-media billionaire who isn’t Elon Musk.

“It looks a lot like political showmanship. Zuckerberg — to these far-right members — really represents Big Tech censorship in a way that no other tech CEO does,” said Chris MacKenzie, senior communications director at Chamber of Progress, a tech industry trade group whose members include Meta.

Likewise, Katie Harbath, who previously was a public policy director for Facebook and a former Republican National Committee strategist, said, “Let’s just be pragmatic here – having Mark’s name in headlines gets a heck of a lot more clicks than necessarily having some of the other CEOs in there.”

Twitter, now called X, also took its share of GOP criticism before Musk bought the platform and aligned himself with Republicans by reinstating former President Donald Trump and releasing internal documents dubbed the Twitter files.

Since then, Zuckerberg has launched Meta’s Threads app, a direct competitor with X, which has only deepened their rivalry, prompting Musk to propose a cage fight. The move also drew a letter from Jordan accusing Threads of bias against Republicans.

“In this partisan Congress, it may be the political price you pay for challenging Elon Musk,” Nu Wexler, who worked in policy communications for Google, Facebook and Twitter, said of Jordan’s focus on Zuckerberg. “Google and Microsoft aren’t building text-based social apps to take on Twitter.”

Republican Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Ken Buck (Colo.), who have each alleged that tech companies censor conservatives, did not respond to requests for comment.

Jordan also subpoenaed Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple in February, compelling them to provide documents in the probe investigating alleged collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech. TikTok also voluntarily provided documents to the committee, according to a Democratic staffer granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive nature of the probe.

Jordan’s critics point out that no other tech executives have faced similar blowback even though they appear to have turned over a similar volume of documents as Meta. Alphabet, which includes Google and YouTube, turned over nearly 53,000 documents and provided 9 employees for transcribed interviews, according to the company. Meta has provided over 53,000 documents and 10 employees to the committee, and says it is complying with Jordan’s subpoenas.

"For many months, Meta has operated in good faith with this committee’s sweeping requests for information. We began sharing documents before the committee’s February subpoena and have continued to do so,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “Meta will continue to comply, as we have thus far, with good faith requests from the committee."

Meta did turn over more internal communications on Tuesday hours before Jordan announced a markup to vote on a resolution to hold Zuckerberg in contempt, but he wasn’t satisfied.

“They’ve given us documents because we're pushing and because we're talking about this — we appreciate that, but we are convinced that it’s way short of what they should be providing us,” Jordan said.

Jordan’s handling of Zuckerberg also stands in stark contrast to a separate House Judiciary probe into the FBI — which netted additional documents just before a Tuesday deadline. As a result, FBI Director Christopher Wray managed to avoid the threat of being held in contempt of Congress – for now. “We got the information we were pushing for. We still think there's more there and we haven't taken anything off the table,” Jordan said.

While Jordan claims Facebook censors GOP viewpoints, Republican strategists and numerous studies have found the opposite to be true: Conservative figures dominate conversations on the platforms.

Alex Conant, a partner at public relations firm Firehouse Strategies and who’s worked for several Republican presidential campaigns, said, “It’s ironic that Republicans have benefited a lot from the very same platforms they're trying to undermine now.”

MacKenzie, from the Chamber of Progress, sees Jordan’s strategy as a straight political appeal to conservatives. “Zuckerberg’s a convenient punching bag because it's where the Republican base has experienced the majority of their content moderation frustrations,” MacKenzie said.

Thursday’s vote is expected to advance to the full House along partisan lines. The committee’s ranking member, Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), has been critical of how Jordan has handled the investigation: "This contempt resolution is not about Meta’s subpoena compliance. And it’s certainly not about protecting free speech.”

With the House preparing to leave for its August recess this Friday, a final vote is not expected until September at the earliest. If the House votes to hold Zuckerberg in contempt, the chamber will file a civil lawsuit in federal court seeking to enforce the subpoena against him. It will be the first time Zuckerberg — or any tech CEO — has been held in contempt of Congress.

Crystal Patterson, a former Facebook employee who worked on government and political outreach and for former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, said if the House moves forward to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress, it could have chilling effects in the long term.

“The larger issue to me is that if Congress does this, they're basically going to be penalizing Mark and the company because they can't find proof of something that isn't happening,” he said. “And that's scary.”