Vice President Kamala Harris' cozy relationship with a high-powered lawyer representing Google in an upcoming federal antitrust case is a clear “conflict of interest,” according to the Trump campaign.
Trump campaign targets Harris in just a few days after the Post reported on their close relationship White-shoe law firm Paul Weiss and its top litigator Karen Dunn play a leading role on Google's outside defense team in the Biden-Harris Justice Department case targeting its digital advertising business.
Google's trial is set to begin on Monday — just a day before Harris and Donald Trump face off in a crucial presidential debate.
Dunn has helped Harris prepare for debates and assisted in crafting her policy platform ahead of the 2024 election. according to the report,
“Kamala Harris will never stand up to Big Tech because she's being coached by Google's top lawyer on what to say in debates,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Tim Murtaugh. told Fox News“Think about how outrageous this is — his administration is suing Google, but Harris is taking political advice from the defendant's lawyer.”
“Any first-year law student knows this is a conflict of interest,” Murtaugh said in an interview on Aug. 26. “But it’s not surprising because Big Tech and the Biden-Harris White House have been conspiring to censor and crush the rights of law-abiding citizens ever since they came into power.”
The Post has contacted the Harris campaign and Paul Weiss for comment.
Google is at risk of having its empire disintegrated after a federal judge ruled last month that the company is a “monopolist” that illegally dominates the online search market.
The federal government similarly wants severance in the digital advertising case.
Google's security got off to a bad start last week The federal judge overseeing the non-jury trial called the company's automatic deletion of employees' chat logs a “clear abuse of privilege”.
Some antitrust watchdogs have expressed concern that tech-friendly advisers in Harris’s field could exert behind-the-scenes pressure to go easy on Google and other Big Tech companies that have become targets of the antitrust police.
“Karen Dunn is being highly paid by Google to get rid of this matter — ideally through a modest settlement — so it’s concerning that she has so much access to Vice President Harris, Garland, Monaco and their teams,” a Capitol Hill veteran who requested anonymity to discuss the matter told The Post last month.
In addition to Dunn, Paul Weiss President Brad Karp is reportedly leading the “Lawyers Committee for Kamala Harris” to raise money for Kamala Harris' campaign.
Other Harris advisers under scrutiny include former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and her brother-in-law and Uber general counsel Tony West, each of whom are considered Silicon Valley allies.
If she is elected president, Harris will have broad authority to appoint officials at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.
Harris has made a controversial statement Plan to reduce the prices of grocery items and housing costs — but has yet to clarify his stance on Big Tech monopolies.
Meanwhile, Trump has publicly criticized Google on multiple occasions during his campaign — most notably accusing the search giant of Suppression of information about assassination attempt He survived in July.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has demanded answers Google was asked why the company's search engine Google omitted the usual list of “autocomplete” suggested results in its search bar when asked about the July 13 shooting.
Google has denied that the lapse was due to censorship and said predictive queries are subject to “built-in protections related to political violence” that were rolled out in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Trump's Justice Department originally brought the antitrust case in 2020 targeting Google's search monopoly.
