Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was forced out of Facebook Inc. for his political views, according to a new report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.

Luckey (pictured) left Facebook in March 2017 after having virtually disappeared six months earlier. When he left, it was revealed that he had made a $10,000 donation to an anti-Hillary Clinton group.

Facebook denied that Luckey was forced out due to his political beliefs, a claim also denied by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg before a Congressional hearing. But the evidence in the Journal report clearly suggests that Luckey’s conservative political reviews were at the center of his departure.

The report detailed a series of emails in which Luckey was both forced to apologize for his donation as well as claim support for Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson, a candidate Zuckerberg and Facebook found more suitable than then-nominee Donald J. Trump.

More damning, the report also noted, Luckey subsequently hired an employment lawyer who argued that Facebook illegally punished him for his political activities and negotiated an exit package of at least $100 million for Luckey to keep the matter from going to court.

Others argued that Luckey wasn’t directly fired for his political beliefs but for not disclosing them, though he had no legal obligation to do so.

Ben Collins, a writer with The Daily Beast, claimed that Luckey was forced out for not disclosing links to a popular conservative subreddit called r/The_Donald, including allegedly making a donation to moderators of the group.

Regardless of whether Luckey was forced out directly or indirectly for his political views, the report verified that they were at the center of decision-making at Facebook with regard to his future at the company. Luckey is only on record in the report as saying that his departure from the company was a thing of the past.

The report comes as Facebook has been attacked by conservatives, including the president, over political bias, something Facebook continues to deny despite some of its own employees describing Facebook as having an “intolerant liberal culture” in a memo.

Brian Amerige, the Facebook engineer who wrote the memo and founded a group within the company called “FB’ers for Political Diversity,” left Facebook in October after other employees complained en masse that political diversity equaled racism and sexism.

Photo: evrydayvr/Flickr