Why Emily Maitlis asked the Facebook whistleblower to leave The News Agents studio
Emily Maitlis interviews the joint winners of this year’s Freedom to Publish prize at the British Book Awards, but has to go to extreme methods to avoid breaking a META gag order on whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams.
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Sarah Wynn-Williams has been asked to leave The News Agents studio so an interview can continue.
Wynn-Williams, author of Careless People – which details her experiences working at META, is under such strict legal binding due to a lawsuit against her by the social media company, that for it to continue, she is not even allowed to be in the room.
Author Amy Wallace, who shared the Freedom to Publish prize at the British Book Awards in May 2026 with Wynn-Williams, joins Wynn-Williams in the studio and is not subject to the same restrictions.
Among Wynn-Williams claims include allegations that Facebook "embedded" members of its staff in the 2016 Donald Trump campaign for President, that Mark Zuckerberg once planned to run for office himself, that it collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party, and was working on predatory techniques targeting teenage girls across its social media platforms.
Facebook denies all allegations made against it.
Read more:
Inside the murky world of Facebook
What Sarah Wynn-Williams can say
Collecting her award at the British Book Awards, Wynn-Williams paid tribute to Virginia Giuffre, the now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein victim who co-wrote Wallace's joint-winning book, Nobody's Girl.
"The people Virginia told us about had grown rich and powerful in the certainty that they would never be held to account," Wynn-Williams said at the awards.
"So they deployed every weapon that money can buy against a woman whose only weapon was her voice.
"They tried to exhaust her to make the cost of speaking so high, so relentless, so total that eventually the spirit gives out before the truth does."
Trying to "silence a woman", she added at the time, tells the world that the truth those people are trying to hide "must be very dangerous indeed".
"Let me say something about what it costs to witness and to write. It can cost everything."
Speaking with Emily Maitlis in The News Agents studio before her departure, Wynn-Williams said it was "a speech about power", and what happens when there is a "counter narrative to their power" from someone like Virgina Giuffre.
"It's also a speech about bearing witness about when you live in times which are dominated by these powerful networks, these powerful elites," Wynn-Williams says.
"It can often feel like there isn't much you can do.
"You can often feel powerless, and at those times I think there is power in bearing witness and in speaking the things that are not normally spoken, and Virginia did that."
Emily Maitlis: 'What the fuck is going on?'
Wynn-Williams, who has been silenced by legal action from META, says she believes the legal system is being "weaponised" by these same powerful people.
"You could see that with Virginia, the legal system was definitely weaponised," she says.
My worry is that it means that there are stories, important stories that will never find the page."
Wynn-Williams' story found the page, but legal restrictions now mean she cannot speak about the book, and could not even remain in the studio while a discussion about the action against her took place.
"I actually can't believe I'm saying this, but in order for us to have the conversation now, I'm going to ask you to leave," Emily Maitlis says.
"I'm going to ask you to leave the studio, because you cannot be present for the conversation that we now need to have."
"What the fuck is going on, because this doesn't feel normal."
‘This is an attempt to punish someone who spoke the truth’
There are no restrictions over what Amy Wallace can say. The only real connection between the two women is the award win their respective books now share.
"They [META] have said in press releases that she defamed them, but notably they have never filed a defamation claim," Wallace tells Maitlis.
"And what does that tell us? That tells us that they don't want to argue a defamation claim because they do not have the goods to prove that she has gotten anything wrong.
"They have not brought legal action saying that she has actually made any mistakes in her book, or that she has a single untruth in her book."
Wallace says the restrictions of the legal action granted to META mean that Wynn-Williams is not allowed to talk about the book, do interviews about it, hold it, or even be near anywhere selling it.
"This is an attempt to punish someone who spoke the truth, in my view," Wallace says.
"Obviously I come to that with the baggage of having worked with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who faced over many years exactly the same kind of intimidation, relentless treatment that some might even call harassment, where your life is turned upside down."
A subpoena, she adds, was served to Wynn-Williams in front of her children.
"The idea is to erode your life," Wallace says.
"There's a silencing of what she knows, both at her experience at Facebook, when she worked there for years, and then also silencing of her voice about what this past year or so has been like."
In response to this interview, a META spokesperson tells The News Agents: "This former employee is trying to use the legal process to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with the company when she accepted a large severance payment years ago. Her book is divorced from reality, disparaging and riddled with false claims."