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Attorney Karen Dunn has been a longtime revolving-door figure in Washington at the intersection of BigLaw and the Democratic Party.
Kamala Harris’s political adviser Karen Dunn seems to have the unusual ability to exist in two places at once. Last week, she both prepped Harris in Pittsburgh for tonight’s presidential debate against Donald Trump, and prepped legal defense strategy in an Alexandria, Virginia, courtroom for Google, which is facing a monopolization lawsuit brought by Harris’s own administration. The first day of the Google trial began Monday, with Dunn, a partner with firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, giving the opening statement in court.
If that seems to you like a blatant conflict of interest, the Harris team would like to recommend you focus your attention elsewhere. Nothing to see here. But even the Trump campaign has picked up on it, criticizing Harris directly for her coziness with Big Tech’s top lawyers. Whatever debate wizardry Dunn’s talents apparently provide for Harris comes with the cost of opening her up to attacks from the right.
Karen Dunn has been a longtime revolving-door figure in Washington at the intersection of BigLaw and the Democratic Party. She did debate work for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, and prepared both Attorney General Merrick Garland for his 2021 confirmation hearing and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for his 2020 congressional hearing.
Dunn’s involvement in the Google trial, which entails the company’s online advertising technology, is really just the tip of the iceberg. For the past four years, Dunn and her firm have been at war with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division to get its head Jonathan Kanter permanently recused from the biggest lawsuits his division has brought, against Google’s monopoly.
Google has already lost one monopolization case to DOJ for dominating the search market, and a separate private-plaintiff lawsuit for its control of the app store. To say the stakes of this adtech case are existential for Google may be putting it mildly.
To protect its client, Paul, Weiss has tried to claim Jonathan Kanter, who used to be a star attorney at the firm, couldn’t possibly be impartial in the case because he previously represented Google’s rivals (at its own firm).
For its part, Paul, Weiss is under attack for flipping sides to represent Google and using confidential information from the company’s rivals in this antitrust case, according to numerous motions filed at the court in July. In so doing, Paul, Weiss likely violated district court judge Leonie Brinkema’s order from last fall setting strict conditions for allowing the firm to remain on the case as Google’s defense.
It’s a messy dispute but one that could actually influence the outcome of the case. The larger point is that conflicts of interest are riddled throughout Paul, Weiss’s gamesmanship in the courtroom, and in the Harris campaign. That’s why Dunn is worth scrutinizing as she plays both sides of the aisle this week.
THE SEEDS OF THE COURTROOM DRAMA playing out in the Google case date back to before the Biden administration.
When Kanter worked as an attorney at Paul, Weiss, he represented News Corp, Microsoft, Spotify, and Yelp on antitrust cases against what those companies described as monopolistic predation by tech giants Google and Apple.
Dunn, a longtime Democratic Party insider, was on the other side. She was dubbed “Apple’s lawyer” by The Hollywood Reporter, and defended Apple, Google, and Facebook in over ten lawsuits related to antitrust violations.
In 2020, she moved over to Paul, Weiss and brought her clients Apple and Amazon along with her. This put Paul, Weiss in a bind, given that two of their lead attorneys had opposing clients, which could present certain challenges for the firm. Based on reporting, Kanter was asked to drop his clients, and instead left the firm to start his own shop.
As soon as Kanter was appointed to lead the DOJ Antitrust Division—a job for which Dunn was briefly entertained—Google pushed for him to be recused from all company litigation or investigations by arguing that he was biased against them, given his previous roster of clients. This accusation never had much basis. Kanter fought against Google in private practice and did the same in government. The DOJ cleared him for work after the standard protocol of a cooling-off period that all administration officials who’d previously worked in the private sector go through.
Google then decided to hire Paul, Weiss for their defense team, around the same time that the DOJ was preparing its second lawsuit against Google for monopolizing digital advertising. This move posed an actual conflict of interest, since Paul, Weiss had effectively “switched sides.” Google tapped numerous Paul, Weiss attorneys who’d represented its rivals, and could use knowledge of their business secrets to help the tech giant beat the charges.
Whatever debate wizardry Dunn’s talents apparently provide for Harris comes with the cost of opening her up to attacks from the right.
Another potential benefit to Google was that Paul, Weiss’s partners, including Karen Dunn, were strapped up with personnel in the current Democratic administration. Dunn herself is married to Brian Netter, the deputy assistant attorney general for federal programs at DOJ. She clerked for Garland, whom she helped prepare for confirmation as attorney general in 2021. Garland even officiated Dunn’s wedding.
“The strategy was clearly that Paul, Weiss’s ties might come in handy to help Google try and influence the administration,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.
As the Google adtech case ramped up, both sides submitted dueling petitions this past fall. Paul, Weiss pushed yet again for Kanter to be recused. Meanwhile, Yelp and News Corp, Kanter’s former clients at Paul, Weiss, petitioned for the firm to be dismissed from representing Google because of attorney-client confidentiality.
This fall, Judge Brinkema, of Virginia’s Eastern District, threw out both motions. But in her decision, she did put certain parameters on Paul, Weiss’s conduct due to conflicts with their past legal work. She barred one Paul, Weiss attorney from working on the Google case, specifically because he had too much insight into rivals. She set very clear bright-line rules that Paul, Weiss could not use evidence for the case that it had acquired in any way during its time working for Google’s competitors.
Months later, News Corp submitted a motion claiming that Paul, Weiss did exactly that.
IN ITS MOTION, NEWS CORP POINTS to five exhibits Google put into the record that Paul, Weiss prepared for News Corp when the firm held the company as a client. The exhibits include slide decks and other documents that News Corp shared with the DOJ during its preliminary investigations into Google’s potential antitrust violations. One of the attorneys at Paul, Weiss representing News Corp during this time was William Isaacson, whose memos for the company are now being used by Google as evidence, according to the motion. Google even went as far as to submit emails between Paul, Weiss’s attorneys and DOJ as the department moved forward with its information requests while investigating Google.
News Corp argues that Paul, Weiss has resorted to dirty tricks that clearly violate basic attorney-client privilege, a foundational principle of trust that law firms usually want to uphold to avoid losing future clients. Either Google is such an important client to Paul, Weiss that they’ll throw caution to the wind, or they think they’re too well regarded to face any retribution from future clients.
“Unfortunately, this dispute over client confidences is a foreseeable result of the court’s original ruling. We continue to believe that Paul, Weiss should be barred from representing Google in this case,” a spokesperson for Yelp, another former Paul, Weiss client, told the Prospect.
Paul Weiss has yet to respond to a request for comment.
It’s difficult to know exactly how Google intends to use the information in these slides without knowing the full context of its prepared defense. That will become clearer as the trial plays out. But it’s notable that the emails included communications between News Corp and DOJ to plan meetings in which Kanter appeared to represent News Corp while he was at Paul, Weiss. This might foreshadow that Google plans to make Kanter’s alleged conflict a key part of its court narrative, to try to undermine the DOJ’s credibility.
If we’ve learned anything about Harris thus far, it’s that the truism “personnel is policy” will prove to be especially relevant for her campaign and future administration. The strong parts of Harris’s economic platform are in small measure a credit to her bringing onto her campaign two of the more progressive advisers from the Biden administration, Brian Deese and Bharat Ramamurti.
But others in the Harris brain trust are trying to swing the campaign in a more business-friendly direction, on things like crypto or capital gains taxes where she’s broken with President Biden.
Dunn has just been a debate prepper to this point. But her involvement as lead counsel in a case where Paul, Weiss has been accused of dirty tricks in a case against the government demands more scrutiny. Especially if that is being done to damage a personnel appointment in Kanter, who has been one of the Biden administration’s most effective officials.
