Steve Taylor/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP Images
Of all the problems Kamala Harris is dealing with in the final stretch of a very close presidential race, money certainly isn’t one of them. Her campaign recently surpassed $1 billion in fundraising, an astounding amount considering she only launched her campaign at the end of July.
Despite this, and the fact that the vast majority of ad spots are booked well in advance, the campaign still fears that it won’t have enough money, according to The Washington Post. That’s because the boatloads of cash haven’t budged the polling numbers for Harris in key battleground states.
This professed urgency has taken the Harris campaign into some of the messier corners of campaign finance, where they continue to raise money from powerful individuals with a material interest in future policy actions of the potential president. For example, the Harris Victory Fund will be hosting a fundraiser this Friday featuring a roster of corporate lawyers who are currently defending Google against one of the Biden-Harris administration’s antitrust lawsuits.
More from David Dayen | Luke Goldstein
The D.C. reception is officially hosted by Harris adviser Tony West, general counsel of Uber, and his former colleagues at the Obama Department of Justice, then-Attorney General Eric Holder and top deputy Sally Yates.
Tickets to be a co-chair for the event go for $50,000, and co-host for $25,000.
One co-chair is law firm Paul, Weiss’s lead attorney Karen Dunn, who ran debate prep for Harris ahead of her contest against Donald Trump last month. That same week, she also delivered the opening arguments in the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of Google against the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit for monopolizing digital advertising.
Another member of Google’s defense team at Paul, Weiss, Bill Isaacson, is listed at the co-host level. Isaacson is at the center of a legal ethics dispute in the case for previously representing competitors to Google like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, before Paul, Weiss switched sides. Despite a judge’s order, Google submitted evidence into the record obtained while Isaacson worked on the News Corp account. He appeared in court while Google grilled News Corp’s witness on the stand to make its case.
The remedy in the Google search case will not be completed during Joe Biden’s term in office.
Paul, Weiss attorney Jeannie Rhee, listed as a co-host, conducted much of the cross-examination for Google against the publishers who alleged competitive harm from Google’s control of adtech.
Separately, co-chair Michael Keeley, an antitrust lawyer at the law firm Axinn, has represented numerous clients on mergers and acquisitions cases before the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, including meatpacker Tyson’s deal with George’s, Inc.
There are other instances where executives from a firm in active litigation with the Biden-Harris administration are donating to Harris’s cause, like Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, who has given $1.9 million to Harris’s campaign directly and to pro-Harris super PACs. Ripple continues to spar in court with the Securities and Exchange Commission over violations of U.S. securities laws. And the Prospect has indicated other instances of Harris donors or advisers whose firms are under investigation or a lawsuit by the administration in which Harris serves.
TOP LAWYERS AT BIG LAW FIRMS being present at Democratic fundraisers is not uncommon. And the usual rebuttal to any questions raised about these kinds of arrangements is that attorneys simply work for their clients and provide vigorous defenses, and that it does not reflect their personal views. But the presence of the Google lawyers at the Harris fundraiser is notable for two reasons.
First, several members of the legal defense team for a company under lawsuit by a Democratic administration then turning around and actively fundraising for that party’s candidate can sound alarms about conflicts of interest. That case is likely to be active during the next administration, and it calls into question how Harris might approach the litigation if she becomes president.
Second, the Department of Justice is also in the midst of working out a remedy for a separate antitrust case it won against Google for its dominance over the search market. The DOJ filed its initial discussion draft of what it’s considering to seek as a remedy, up to and including the breakup of Google’s web browser (Chrome), mobile operating system (Android), and app store (Play) from the parent company.
The remedy in the Google search case will not be completed during Joe Biden’s term in office. Therefore the decision of whether to ask a judge to break up Google really will fall to the next administration. So having Google’s lawyers donating and raising money for one of the two candidates presents a far bigger potential conflict.
Officially, Google has responded to these proposed possible remedies by calling government enforcers “radical,” and saying that these measures would break phones and web browsers. The company is lobbying in the public sphere to win the remedy after losing the verdict. That makes the Google lawyer–Harris fundraiser nexus more hazardous.
“Whether or not to settle with Google, and on what terms, will be one of the greatest questions that a Harris administration will face,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project. “It would be a travesty if key Harris fundraisers are involved in such negotiations, and it is honestly a cause for worry that key agents of a corporation facing existential governmental litigation are playing a role in the election.”
A separate remedy in private litigation, forcing Google to open up its phones to app store competition, has already been handed down.
Harris has never spelled out her position on the Google remedy or other ongoing antitrust lawsuits against Big Tech. Numerous campaign surrogates, some under investigation by Biden administration antitrust authorities, have suggested that the regulators bringing these cases, in particular Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, should not be part of a future Harris administration.
The Harris campaign did not respond to questions about the appearance of having Google lawyers at her fundraisers, nor did it respond to questions about her approach in the ongoing antitrust cases and whether she favors breaking up Google, labeled a bad actor by a federal judge for its actions in search markets.
Donald Trump, of course, has a far more dangerous attitude on these matters. At times, his campaign has criticized Harris for working with Karen Dunn as a perceived conflict of interest. Yet, asked point-blank at a Bloomberg News event yesterday whether he favored a Google breakup in the search case, which was originally filed by his administration, Trump first went on a tangent about voter files in Virginia, then said, “Google’s got a lot of power … What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it’s more fair. They do treat me very badly … and I called the head of Google the other day and I said, ‘I’m getting a lot of good stories lately but you don’t find them in Google.’”
The implication is that Trump would punish Google if he continued to perceive them as not being nice to him personally, but might let them off the hook as long as they are “more fair.” That’s a weaponization of antitrust for political purposes, a transformation of the regulatory structure into one in which paying tribute to the leader is enough to get companies out of trouble.
