?
2021-01-18 Big Tech Critics Alarmed at Direction of Biden Antitrust Personnel Renata Hesse, who has worked for Google and Amazon, is the leading candidate to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Renata Hesse, a former Justice Department official under President Barack Obama, worked alongside Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) defending Google a decade ago, helped shepherd through the Amazon/Whole Foods merger, and represented several pharmaceutical companies and other clients in antitrust cases. She is the leading contender for the assistant attorney general for antitrust position, multiple sources told the Prospect and The Intercept on Friday. Sources also said that Juan Arteaga, another Obama Justice Department veteran who defended JPMorgan Chase and several other financial firms in fraud cases and represented AT&T in its merger with Time Warner, was also being considered but was more likely to be appointed deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division. Reuters on Sunday reported that Hesse and Arteaga were the leading candidates for AAG.
The Big Tech ties have progressives particularly exercised by the possible Hesse pick, though Arteaga’s long track record of working on behalf of consolidation is also alarming. There are active anti-monopoly cases at the antitrust division against Google and Facebook, the biggest such cases in 20 years. Hesse’s work for Google would likely force her to recuse from the former.
There is bipartisan support for reining in Big Tech and a blueprint for how to do it in an exhaustive report from the House Antitrust Subcommittee. Picking a Big Tech lawyer would open up Biden to criticism from the left and right, aside from the unusual circumstance of the top attorney in the division recusing herself from the most important case under her watch.
“Bringing in anybody from Big Tech to a leadership role in antitrust is a political, policy, and managerial disaster,” said Zephyr Teachout, author of “Break ’Em Up” and a frequent Big Tech critic, referring to Hesse. “We know how the revolving door works. The ideology of big companies shapes the ideology of government.”
2021-01-13 Biden Must Close the Revolving Door Between BigLaw and Government This week, Politico reported that Susan Davies, a corporate antitrust lawyer who has represented Facebook, was a leading contender to head Biden’s Department of Justice Antitrust Division. This news came on the heels of reports that David Frederick, a corporate lawyer who has defended oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, was under consideration to become Biden’s solicitor general. These stories have disturbed many who hope (particularly after the Democrats’ Senate victories in Georgia) that the Biden administration will represent a shift away from the corruption and self-dealing of the Trump administration.
Davies and Frederick are not the first corporate lawyers rumored to be joining the Biden team. Their private-sector work and potential nominations are emblematic of a deeper divide in the Democratic Party, seen in the criticism of figures like Neal Katyal, a well-known Democratic figure who recently fought to shield corporations for abetting child slavery while representing Nestlé in the Supreme Court. This divide boils down to one question: Should a lawyer’s previous clients be a factor in whether or not they receive a political appointment in the new administration?
Quite simply, the answer is yes. High-level legal appointees, including Biden’s picks for attorney general, deputy attorneys general, and solicitor general, will be some of the most powerful people in the nation, and their decisions in these roles will have a wide-ranging impact on the lives of the American people. These individuals should therefore be held to the highest ethical standards and face the strictest scrutiny during their hiring process. Their integrity and commitment to the public good should be impeccable.
While progressive groups have called on Biden to scrutinize potential appointees’ ties to the corporate sector, many corporate lawyers and Obama alumni have pushed back against these efforts. They claim that judging lawyers based on their clients is not merely unfair but threatens our entire legal system.
Read more from the Revolving Door Project
Eric Holder articulated the latest version of this argument in an article published last month in which he comes to the defense of Katyal. Holder claims that just as Katyal should not be held accountable for the crimes committed by the clients he defended in Guantanamo Bay, he should be immune from criticism of his defense of Nestlé’s actions.
.
progressiveissuesblog 