Facebook exec apologizes for Russia probe tweets, report says

FILE - In this Thursday, Jan. 4, 2018, file photo, a man demonstrates how he enters his Facebook page as he works on his computer at a restaurant in Brasilia, Brazil. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The Facebook executive who recently weighed in on the government's Russia investigation has now reportedly expressed regret for his comments.

After the US indicted 13 Russian nationals for election meddling, Facebook's VP of ads Rob Goldman took to Twitter on Friday, arguing that the main goal of the campaign wasn't to sway the election since much of the Kremlin-backed advertising spend on Facebook occurred after Nov. 8. President Donald Trump subsequently re-tweeted Goldman's message, writing: "The Fake News Media never fails."

After facing criticism, Goldman apologized to his colleagues, according to Wired.

"I wanted to apologize for having tweeted my own view about Russian interference without having it reviewed by anyone internally," Goldman wrote in an internal message to Facebook colleagues, Wired reports. "The tweets were my own personal view and not Facebook's. I conveyed my view poorly. The Special Counsel has far more information about what happened [than] I do—so seeming to contradict his statements was a serious mistake on my part."

Goldman reportedly went on to offer his "deepest apologies" to other Facebook staffers who "have worked so hard over the last six months to demonstrate that we understand our responsibility to prevent abuse on Facebook—and are working hard to do better in the future."

In his earlier tweet thread about the issue, Goldman wrote that "the main goal of the Russian propaganda and misinformation effort is to divide America by using our institutions, like free speech and social media, against us." In its indictment, however, the Justice Department said that, during the 2016 campaign, the Russians also wanted "to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

In an official statement about the matter, Facebook distanced itself from Goldman's comments. "Nothing we found contradicts the Special Counsel's indictments," Facebook's VP of global public policy Joel Kaplan wrote, according to Wired. "Any suggestion otherwise is wrong."

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.