Top Google lawyer coached Kamala Harris for Trump debate — and tech antitrust watchdogs are crying foul
A top lawyer for Google in the search giant’s landmark trial with the US government is also a key adviser to the Kamala Harris campaign — and tech antitrust watchdogs are calling the cozy relationship “outrageous,” The Post has learned.
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.
“You couldn’t have scripted this any better if you were writing a TV movie,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project.
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.
“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.
Dunn is the top litigator at white-shoe law firm Paul Weiss, whose chairman Brad Karp is heading up a “Lawyers Committee for Kamala Harris” to raise cash for her White House bid. She is tasked with defending Google against a DOJ case that is seen as an existential threat to its business model.
The Dunn dynamic has drawn the attention of anti-monopoly experts who fear that she and tech-friendly advisers in Harris’s inner circle will push behind the scenes for a “slap-on-the-wrist settlement” rather than a breakup of Google’s dominant monopolies, as The Post has reported.
While Dunn is a highly regarded lawyer with a long history of defending Big Tech clients like Apple and Uber in major cases, some experts nevertheless saw Google’s selection of her to deliver its opening statement as a clear power play meant to flex her ties to the White House.
“It has to be demoralizing for the team of attorneys at the DOJ working around the clock to get the adtech case against Google ready for trial on the ‘rocket docket’ timetable to see the administration sitting down with the opposition’s lawyer for advice,” said Brendan Benedict, an antitrust litigator at Benedict Law Group who has faced off against the tech giant in court.
The cozy ties could “very well mean that Dunn is on the shortlist to replace [antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter] at the DOJ when Harris takes office,” Benedict added. Dunn was reportedly considered for the gig at the start of President Biden’s term in office.
When reached for comment, a Paul Weiss representative pointed to recent quotes from legal experts who disputed claims of a conflict of interest.
For example, Steven Lubet, an emeritus professor of legal ethics at Northwestern University’s law school, told the New York Times that there was “no conflict between coaching debate prep and representing a client in a case opposed to the government.”
Google declined to comment. The Harris campaign did not return a request for comment.
The uproar over Dunn’s role in the Harris campaign is just the latest development of an ethical quagmire in the Google adtech case related to Paul Weiss’s involvement.
Aiden Buzzetti, president of the conservative group Bull Moose Project, described the New York law firm’s tactics toward Kanter as a “huge ethical red flag.”
“I’m surprised that the Harris campaign even open themselves up to those kinds of questions in the first place,” said Buzzetti. “She’s literally being coached on what to say even by Google’s law firm. I can’t really put into words just how concerning that is for us as an organization that is opposed to this Big Tech market domination and manipulation.”
Paul Weiss accused Kanter – himself a former attorney at the firm – of being biased due to past work representing Google foes such as Yelp, the trade group News/Media Alliance and The Post’s owner News Corp. Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected Google’s claims as “a red herring defense.”
Meanwhile, Yelp and News/Media Alliance accused Paul Weiss of switching sides by agreeing to defend Google in the case and improperly leveraging the knowledge it gained while working with the company’s critics. They asked the court to bar the firm from representing Google.
Brinkema also rejected that motion last October – though she did impose significant restrictions, such as ordering a recusal of one Paul Weiss lawyer from the case and blocking Google from submitting evidence related to Yelp or the trade group.
In a July filing, News Corp alleged that Paul Weiss had ignored the judge’s restrictions and potentially violated attorney-client privilege through its submission of certain documents in the adtech case.
Top Republicans have begun to criticize Harris over her reliance on Dunn.
In a Sept. 10 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee demanded a briefing no later than Sept. 24 on how the DOJ was “working to combat potential conflicts of interest and political bias” related to Dunn’s involvement in the Google trial.
Elsewhere, a top Trump campaign adviser blasted Dunn’s activities as “outrageous” and argued it showed Harris will “never stand up to Big Tech.”
In her opening statement, Dunn argued the DOJ’s case – filed last January by Biden-Harris appointees –would bring disastrous “unintended consequences” if it resulted in the forced breakup of Google’s stranglehold over the digital ad market.
“Yes, Karen Dunn arguing against ‘government intervention’ in a market in which the government alleges that Google possesses a 91% durable market share, then leaving to prep VP Harris for her Presidential debate, is extremely unsettling,” Lee Hepner, lead counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote on X.
