Antitrust watchdogs are raising the alarm over the connection between Vice President Kamala Harris and a top lawyer for a tech giant that is facing a lawsuit by the current administration.
“You couldn’t have scripted this any better if you were writing a TV movie,” Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, told the New York Post regarding how a high-powered lawyer defending Google in a landmark antitrust suit also helped Harris prepare for her debate against former President Donald Trump last week.
“In a doubleheader that turned heads across the Beltway, Google attorney Karen Dunn last Tuesday delivered an opening defense in Virginia federal court against the Biden-Harris Justice Department’s lawsuit targeting its digital ad business – and then reportedly raced out of the courtroom to assist Harris that same afternoon with final preparations to take on Trump in Philadelphia,” the New York Post reported.
Top Google lawyer who coached Kamala Harris for the Trump debate is raising concerns among tech antitrust watchdogs. This connection has sparked debate about potential conflicts of interest and fairness in oversight.
— 𝙎𝙐𝙍𝙂𝙀𝙊𝙉 𝙊𝙁 𝕏 (𝙈.𝘼.) (@MukaRRamAli_005) September 16, 2024
“With Harris receiving rave reviews over her debate performance against Trump, Dunn’s influence in Democratic circles is hitting its peak. That could bode well for Google, which was already determined to have an illegal monopoly over online search in a separate federal trial,” the outlet added.
Antitrust experts are calling it an “outrageous” conflict of interest for Harris to have been advised by a lawyer who is also representing a company being sued by the Biden-Harris administration.
“One imagines her stature in Harris world has only gone up after the debate – which could be concerning if she’s ever negotiating a potential settlement with the Justice Department under Harris,” Hauser said.
Brad Karp is the chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss where Dunn is a top attorney. Karp also happens to be helping Harris in her White House bid by heading up “Lawyers Committee for Kamala Harris,” according to The Post.
“It’s clear that you can’t serve both sides,” Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project told The New York Times. “If these were legal cases, she would be ethically barred from doing what she’s doing.”
In an interview earlier this month, former first lady Hillary Clinton said Dunn “”is someone who as a lawyer sweats the details, but she has an ability in her communications work to see the big picture, and that’s really a rare quality.” Dunn worked on Hilary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign in 1999.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week asking to be briefed on how the DOJ was working to combat “potential conflicts of interest and political bias” in its lawsuit against Google.
“This apparent conflict of interest raises serious concerns about whether Dunn’s relationship with key figures in the Biden-Harris Administration creates a conflict of interest that could inappropriately bias the Department’s approach in United States v. Google LLC,” Jordan wrote.
One can only imagine the uproar if the sides were switched and it was GOP nominee Trump being advised by a lawyer being sued by the Biden administration. Social media users weighed in on the latest.
Obviously, she didn’t do a very good job. The country still doesn’t know what she stands for other than open borders….
— Gayle Fischer (@GayleFischer) September 16, 2024
Major conflict of interest.
— Adam Thomas (@TruthSeekerAdam) September 16, 2024
I thought Harris was a brilliant, talented debater, and a tough career prosecutor. Why does she need a debate coach?
— J Murphy, ESQ (@JLMurphy7) September 16, 2024
Kamala “Tax The Rich” Harris sure has a lot of rich friends. It’s almost like she’s lying about the policy.
— RFK Jr’s brain worm 🪱 (@deadbrainworm) September 16, 2024
