Technology

Google stacks its legal team with former DOJ employees as it faces antitrust cases

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2 years ago

March 17, 2023

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People walk near the Google offices on July 04, 2022 in New York City.

John Smith | View Press | Getty Images

Google‘s parent company Alphabet has stacked its legal team with former Department of Justice employees as it fights two separate antitrust lawsuits from the agency, public profiles show.

Former DOJ employees make up both its in-house team and members of outside counsel firms it employs. The company has hired three former DOJ officials into regulatory roles since May 2022, and one before that in 2021, according to public information including social media profiles. Google also uses four different outside counsel firms loaded with nearly 20 former DOJ officials, many of whom worked in the Antitrust Division at various times.

Such hiring to its internal regulatory team is a reflection of the intense scrutiny Google is facing from governments around the world. It can be a signal that a company anticipates dealing with regulatory challenges in years to come, even if it doesn’t know exactly what form it’ll take yet, according to two former government officials.

“When companies find themselves under intense scrutiny from regulatory authorities, antitrust law or otherwise, they make moves like this,” said Bill Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chair who now teaches antitrust law at George Washington University.

Google now faces two antitrust challenges from the DOJ, both to its search and ad tech businesses, and additional challenges from a slew of state attorneys general. Regulators around the world, including in Europe and Australia, have also presented policy and enforcement hurdles.

Google’s hiring is not surprising for a company under such a microscope, according to Doug Melamed, a former acting assistant attorney general at the DOJ Antitrust Division who’s now a scholar-in-residence at Stanford Law School.

The company had already been fighting one complex antitrust case that would likely require a team of 10 to 15 lawyers alone, according to Melamed, when the Department brought its second antitrust challenge against the company earlier this year.

“They don’t have the capacity to handle a case like that just sitting idle,” Melamed said. “They’ve got to now think about well, what outside lawyers are available that have to have the time and expertise to handle this case? And then, do I have the in-house capability to support it and supervise it?”

The added threat of new legislation targeting Google’s business, and that of other tech firms, looms. In the near term, it appears that a massive lobbying campaign by the industry has successfully delayed the most disruptive reforms. But the possibility of renewed energy around that legislation still hangs over the industry, and a company like Google “can take nothing for granted now,” Kovacic said, adding that’s likely a reason for the company to build out its regulatory forces.

“New entrants and new innovations are driving competition and delivering value for America’s consumers, publishers, and merchants,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement for this story. “We’re proud of our services and we look forward to making our case in court.”

Revolving door hiring

Alphabet now has at least five former DOJ staffers on its legal team, including Google’s director of competition Kevin Yingling, who’s been with the company for more than a decade and worked as a trial attorney at the Department of Justice from 2000 to 2005, according to his LinkedIn.

The company hired Kate Smith as counsel for Alphabet’s regulatory response, investigations and strategy unit in February 2021, according to LinkedIn. Smith was a trial attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Frauds division from September 2015 until January 2021.

In May 2022, according to LinkedIn, Alphabet hired Mike Kass, a former trial attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Fraud section, as its regulatory and litigation counsel for products.

A month later, the company hired Seema Mittal Roper as counsel on its regulatory response team. Mittal Roper worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the DOJ in Maryland from 2013 to 2018, according to LinkedIn.

Most recently, the company hired Jack Mellyn as strategy counsel on its regulatory team. Mellyn was previously an attorney advisor and then acting assistant chief in the DOJ’s competition policy and advocacy section, according to a previously available social media profile.

It’s not clear which employees are working on the specific matters before the DOJ and Kass’ role appears focused outside of antitrust. It’s likely these employees never worked on Google-related matters they’re dealing with now during their time in government, given their dates and areas of previous employment, as well as federal ethics rules that bar certain conflicts.

But experts say this kind of hiring, which is common among businesses faced with regulatory scrutiny, can still be beneficial to a company because of the unique insight, touch or credibility that an ex-government attorney might hold when it comes to their former colleagues.

“There are lots of lawyers out there. But only alumni of an office really understand how that office works,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks the business ties of executive branch officials. “That means its strengths and weaknesses, that means the tendencies of people in that office. And they can therefore give much more concrete intelligence and better-informed advice to their client.”

Hauser said this may mean the lawyers could advise a client or employer to flood the agency with information rather than comply with a certain document request, knowing that the enforcers don’t have the capacity to deal with it. Or, they might suggest strategies to approach a deposition, knowing the government staffer conducting it.

“A lawyer who’s had experience in the government doesn’t bring information about the specific matters of the companies involved, but rather brings a general perspective about how the agency is approaching these kinds of problems,” Melamed said.

Enforcement agencies also often have to trust whether they believe the target of an investigation has complied with its requests. Hauser said the agencies may be more inclined to take the word of their former colleagues, compared to a more removed attorney.

A recent event shows what can happen when that trust is broken. The DOJ last month accused Google of destroying chat messages it should have kept under a litigation hold related to the investigation. The DOJ made the accusation in a legal filing after Epic Games raised the concern in its own antitrust litigation against Google.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement at the time of the DOJ’s filing that they “strongly refute the DOJ’s claims.”

Google also works with outside counsel firms on its antitrust cases, including Axinn, Freshfields, Ropes & Gray and Wilson Sonsini, based on reports, statements and legal filings. Those firms collectively have around 20 former DOJ employees on their staff, many of them working in antitrust. Though these attorneys may not all work on Google matters, the firms themselves often tout the benefit of former government officials in bringing a helpful perspective to clients.

For example, Freshfields says on its website that its “deep bench of former DOJ and FTC trial attorneys gives us unique insight into how the enforcement agencies approach enforcement in general and litigation in particular.”

Kovacic said agency experience is something companies look for in hiring outside firms.

“In deciding who to retain, what law firm to retain or what economic consultancy to retain, they would place a lot of weight on how many former government officials are in those firms,” Kovacic said.

Freshfields attorneys Julie Elmer and Eric Mahr have led Google’s defense against an advertising technology monopolization case brought by a group of states led by Texas, The New York Times reported in 2021. And Bloomberg Law reported this year that Mahr will also lead its defense in the ad tech case brought by the DOJ.

Mahr was director of litigation for the DOJ Antitrust Division from 2015 to 2017, according to the Freshfields site, and Elmer worked as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division from 2015 to 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Revolving door hiring goes both ways between the public and private sectors, with government officials often working for previous employers or clients who become relevant in their work. For example, DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter previously worked for clients including Microsoft and Yelp which have complained of Google’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior.

Ultimately, however, Kanter was cleared to work on cases and investigations involving Google, despite the company’s suggestion that his past work should cast doubt on his ability to be fair in such matters.

The DOJ and Wilson Sonsini declined to comment. The three other firms mentioned did not immediately provide a comment for this story.

Limits for former government employees

There are limits on what former government officials can work on under federal ethics and Bar rules.

For example, the DOJ’s website says that former employees can’t represent someone before the government on an issue involving parties they “personally and substantially” worked on during their time in government. For two years after leaving the Department, a former employee also cannot represent anyone before the government in a matter involving parties they know “was pending under his official responsibility for the last year of government service and in which the U.S. is a party or has a substantial interest.”

And for one year after leaving the agency, former senior employees cannot represent someone before the agency “with the intent to influence” the DOJ on a pending matter or one in which it has an interest.

Personal and substantial work on a matter within government doesn’t depend on the length of time devoted to it, but the role a person played in potentially influencing the outcome or direction, according to Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) who previously advised government officials on ethics at agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department.

But even if a former government official can’t work on a specific matter they were privy to during their earlier employment, their insight might still be useful to a company.

“You can read about it, but when you’re actually part of dealing with these cases, you know that there are certain factors that are going to either act as mitigating or … that are going to more favorably incline you to bring a case,” Canter said. “It’s just your general knowledge and experience.”

When companies hire former government officials, they may also have the idea that those employees will be viewed more favorably by the current regime.

“Maybe there’s just this general impression that they’re trying to surround themselves with what will be perceived by their former colleagues as the good guys,” Canter hypothesized.

Some might argue that experience could be beneficial to the government in some cases, Canter noted. A former government employee might have a deeper understanding of the importance of compliance or providing certain information to officials, for example, having seen up close what could be at stake if they don’t.

Hauser said it’s unlikely DOJ leadership, especially Kanter, who has made a point to bring more aggressive cases in the tech space and overall, would be overly swayed to view things Google’s way in ongoing matters. But, he said, the impact of former DOJ staff employed by Google could be more influential in an emerging issue, where there’s an opportunity to leave a first impression on senior leadership about it.

The degree of this kind of influence may be relatively small on the level of an individual case, Hauser said, but for a company under such a high degree of regulatory scrutiny, it could add up.

“You’re talking about billions and billions of dollars of potential implications for Google’s net worth,” Hauser said. “Relatively small changes in the scope of the investigation, the timeframe of the investigation, can be very big, even if they don’t go to the overall question of will there be any lawsuits by the Justice Department against Google.”

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WATCH: How US antitrust law works, and what it means for Big Tech

Technology

Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Published

7 hours ago

July 18, 2025

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Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Marco Bello | Getty Images

The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.

The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”

A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.

“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.

Microsoft stops relying on Chinese engineers for Pentagon cloud support

Published

7 hours ago

July 18, 2025

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Microsoft stops relying on Chinese engineers for Pentagon cloud support

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (L) returns to the stage after a pre-recorded interview during the Microsoft Build conference opening keynote in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft on Friday revised its practices to ensure that engineers in China no longer provide technical support to U.S. defense clients using the company’s cloud services.

The company implemented the changes in an effort to reduce national security and cybersecurity risks stemming from its cloud work with a major customer. The announcement came days after ProPublica published an extensive report describing the Defense Department’s dependence on Microsoft software engineers in China.

“In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services,” Frank Shaw, the Microsoft’s chief communications officer, wrote in a Friday X post.

The change impacts the work of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services division, which analysts estimate now generates more than 25% of the company’s revenue. That makes Azure bigger than Google Cloud but smaller than Amazon Web Services. Microsoft receives “substantial revenue from government contracts,” according to its most recent quarterly earnings statement, and more than half of the company’s $70 billion in first-quarter revenue came from customers based in the U.S.

In 2019, Microsoft won a $10 billion cloud-related defense contract, but the Pentagon wound up canceling it in 2021 after a legal battle. In 2022, the department gave cloud contracts worth up to $9 billion in total to Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft.

ProPublica reported that the work of Microsoft’s Chinese Azure engineers is overseen by “digital escorts” in the U.S., who typically have less technical prowess than the employees they manage overseas. The report detailed how the “digital escort” arrangement might leave the U.S. vulnerable to a cyberattack from China.

“This is obviously unacceptable, especially in today’s digital threat environment,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video posted to X on Friday. He described the architecture as “a legacy system created over a decade ago, during the Obama administration.” The Defense Department will review its systems in search for similar activity, Hegseth said.

Microsoft originally told ProPublica that its employees and contractors were adhering to U.S. government rules.

“We remain committed to providing the most secure services possible to the US government, including working with our national security partners to evaluate and adjust our security protocols as needed,” Shaw wrote.

WATCH: Microsoft Security VP Vasu Jakkal talks cybersecurity with Jim Cramer

Technology

The investor behind Opendoor’s 190% run nearly shut down his fund

Published

8 hours ago

July 18, 2025

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The investor behind Opendoor's 190% run nearly shut down his fund

Courtesy: Opendoor

On June 6, online real estate service Opendoor was so desperate to get its beaten-down stock price back over $1 and stay listed on the Nasdaq that management proposed a reverse split, potentially lifting the price of each share by as much as 50 times.

The stock inched its way up over the next five weeks.

Then Eric Jackson started cheerleading.

Jackson, a hedge fund manager who was bullish on Opendoor years earlier when the company appeared to be thriving and was worth roughly $20 billion, wrote on X on Monday that his firm, EMJ Capital, was back in the stock.

“@EMJCapital has taken a position in $OPEN — and we believe it could be a 100-bagger over the next few years,” Jackson wrote. He added later in the thread that the stock could get to $82.

It’s a long, long way from that mark.

Opendoor shares soared 189% this week, by far their best weekly performance since the company’s public market debut in late 2020. The stock closed on Friday at $2.25. The stock’s highest-volume trading days on record were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.

Jackson said in an interview on Thursday that the bulk of his firm’s Opendoor purchases came when the stock was in the 70s and 80s, meaning cents, and he’s bought options as well for his portfolio.

Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson’s purchases. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.

What has changed dramatically is Jackson’s online influence and the size of his following. The more he posts, the higher the stock goes.

“There’s a real hunger for buying the next big thing,” Jackson told CNBC, adding that investors like to find the “downtrodden.”

It’s something Jackson’s firm, based in Toronto, has in common with Opendoor.

Watch CNBC's full interview with Social Capital's Chamath Palihapitiya

When Opendoor went public through a special purpose acquisition company in 2020, it was riding a SPAC wave and broader gains driven by low interest rates and Covid-era market euphoria. Investors pumped money into the riskiest assets, lifting money-losing tech upstarts to astronomical valuations.

Opendoor’s business involved using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains. Zillow tried and failed to compete.

Opendoor shares peaked at over $39 in Feb. 2021 for a market cap just above $22.5 billion. But by the end of that year, the shares were trading below $15, before collapsing 92% in 2022 to end the year at $1.16.

Rising interest rates hammered the whole tech sector, hitting Opendoor particularly hard as increased borrowing costs reduced demand for homes.

Jackson, similarly, had a miserable 2022, coinciding with the worst year for the Nasdaq since 2008. Jackson said his key client withdrew its money at the end of the year, and “I’ve been small ever since.”

‘Epic comeback’

While his assets under management remain minimal, Jackson’s reputation for getting in early to a rebound story was burnished by the performance of Carvana.

The automotive e-commerce platform lost 98% of its value in 2022 as investors weighed the likelihood of bankruptcy. In the middle of that year, with Carvana still far from bottoming out, Jackson expressed his bullishness. He told CNBC that April that he liked the stock, and then promoted its recovery on a podcast in June. He also said he liked Opendoor at the time.

Investors willing to stomach further losses in 2022 were rewarded with a 1,000% gain in 2023, and a lot more upside from there. The stock closed on Friday at $347.52, up from a low of $3.72 in Dec. 2022, and almost triple its price at the time of Jackson’s appearance on CNBC in April of that year.

After Carvana’s 2022 slide, “then obviously began an epic comeback,” Jackson said. Opendoor, meanwhile, “continued to roll down the mountain,” he said.

Jackson said that the fallout of 2022 led him to pursue a different method of stockpicking. He started hiring a small team of developers, which is now four people, to build out artificial intelligence models. The firm has experimented with several models —some have worked and some haven’t — but he said the focus now is using what he’s learned from Carvana to find “100x” opportunities.

In addition to Opendoor, Jackson has been promoting IREN, a provider of power for bitcoin mining and AI workloads, and Cipher Mining, which is in a similar space. He’s seen his following on Elon Musk‘s social media site X, which he said was stuck for years between 32,000 and 34,000, swell to almost 50,000. And after a lengthy lull, investors are reaching out to him to try and put money into his fund, he said.

Jackson has a lot riding on Opendoor, a company that saw revenue and number of homes sold slip in the first quarter from a year earlier, and racked up almost $370 million in losses over the past four quarters.

In early June, Opendoor announced plans for a reverse split — ranging from 1 for 10 to 1 for 50 — to “give us optionality in preserving our listing on Nasdaq.” With the stock now well over $1, such a move appears less necessary, as shareholders prepare to vote on the proposal on July 28.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jackson. “Those things usually further cement a company’s move into oblivion rather than hail some big revival.”

Opendoor didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Banking on growth

Analysts are projecting a more than 5% drop in revenue this year, followed by 20% growth in 2026 and 12% expansion in 2017, according to LSEG. Losses are expected to narrow over that stretch.

Jackson said his analysis factors in projections of $11.5 billion in revenue for 2029, which would be well over double the company’s expected sales for this year. He looked at the multiples of companies like Zillow and Carvana, which he said trade for 4 to 7 times forward revenue. Opendoor’s forward price-to-sales ratio is currently well below 1.

With Zillow and Redfin having exited the instant-buying home market, Opendoor faces little competition in allowing homeowners to sell their property online for cash, rather than going through an extended bidding, sales and closing process.

Jackson is banking on revenue growth and increased market share to lead to a profitable business that will push investors to value the company with a multiple somewhere between Zillow and Carvana. At $82, Opendoor would be worth about $60 billion, which is roughly 5 times projected 2029 revenue.

Jackson said his model assumes that “like Carvana, Opendoor can prove that it can permanently turn the tide and get to sustained profitability” so that the “market multiple would get reassessed.”

In the meantime, he’ll keep posting on X.

On Friday, Jackson wrote a thread consisting of 11 posts, recounting the challenge of having “99.5% of my AUM” disappear overnight after his primary investor pulled out in 2022.

“Translation: he fired me for losing him too much money,” Jackson wrote. He said he almost shut down the fund, and was even encouraged to do so by his wife and accountant.