Former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant during a trip to Europe — and exhorted 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, a former Facebook employee who wrote about the six years she spent at the tech giant in “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
During a long drive through Europe, Sandberg and her then-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 reaching $13,000, according to a book review published on Monday 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.
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“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson told The Post.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 died 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, 55, 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.”
When questioned by Congress in 2018, Zuckerberg claimed, “No decisions have been made around the conditions under which any possible future service might be offered in China.”
In the Times’ book review, Wynn-Williams is quoted as bluntly stating: “He lies.”
Now working in AI policy, Wynn-Williams has filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC.
A spokesperson for Sandberg declined to comment.
A representative for Wynn-Williams told The Post: “Meta has made a number of false and inconsistent statements about Sarah since the news of her memoir broke.”
“The events that led to her departure from Meta are described in detail in the memoir, and while Meta’s statements are trying to mislead the public, the book speaks for itself.”
