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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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Joby Aviation says it is doubling production at its air taxi manufacturing hub

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Joby Aviation says it is doubling production at its air taxi manufacturing hub

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby Aviation, stands near an electric air taxi by Joby Aviation at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.

Roselle Chen | Reuters

Joby Aviation is ramping up its manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. as it races to roll out air taxi service in 2026.

The electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) maker said Tuesday that it’s launching production at its remodeled components facility in Dayton, Ohio, and plans to double capacity at its Marina, California, manufacturing hub.

“Reimagining urban mobility takes speed, scale, and precision manufacturing. Our expanded manufacturing footprint in both California and Ohio is preparing us to do just that,” said product chief Eric Allison in a release.

Shares jumped more than 7%, building on a 16% year-to-date gain.

Joby Aviation and competitors such as Archer Aviation and Eve Air Mobility are aiming to roll out eVTOLs worldwide that can ease traffic congestion in crowded city centers, but they are awaiting regulatory approval.

The company is currently in the process of gaining Federal Aviation Administration approval for its vehicles.

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Last month, Joby Aviation shares popped on news that it delivered its first eVTOL to the United Arab Emirates, with plans to launch service in the region next year. The company agreed to an exclusive six-year deal to roll out air taxi service in Dubai last February.

Joby said the new facilities will create hundreds of new full-time jobs and underscore its commitment to fostering American innovation. At full capacity, the 435,500-square-foot California factory will manufacture as many as 24 aircraft annually.

The electric air transport company also said the opening coincided with the flight of its sixth aircraft.

Engineers from Toyota will help ramp up aircraft production to 500 annually at the Ohio facility. The companies inked a $500 million deal last year.

Shares of Joby and its competitors have ballooned in value this year as interest in the technology gains steam.

In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that included the creation of an air taxi testing program.

WATCH: Joby Aviation CEO on UAE delivery: This is a huge milestone for us

Joby Aviation CEO on UAE delivery: This is a huge milestone for us

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Commerce Secretary Lutnick says China is only getting Nvidia’s ‘4th best’ AI chip

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Commerce Secretary Lutnick says China is only getting Nvidia’s ‘4th best’ AI chip

Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Commerce speaks during the Pennsylvania Energy And Innovation Summit 2025 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on July 15, 2025.

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said the Trump administration reversed course on allowing Nvidia to sell its AI chips to China because the U.S. company will not be giving over its best technology.

Lutnick made the remark speaking with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan, saying that Nvidia wants to sell China its “4th best” chip, which is slower than the fastest chips that U.S. companies use.

“We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best,” Lutnick said.

Nvidia said Monday night that it would soon resume sales of the H20 chip to China after the Trump administration signaled that it would grant the chipmaker necessary export licenses.

Lutnick said that the administration said that the renewed sale of H20 chips to China was linked to a rare-earths magnet deal. Lutnick said it was in U.S. interests to have Chinese companies using American technology so they continue to use an American “tech stack.”

“The fourth one down, we want to keep China using it,” Lutnick said. “We want to keep having the Chinese use the American technology stack, because they still rely upon it.”

Similarly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said in recent weeks that the U.S. should continue selling his chips to China so Chinese companies don’t invest in homegrown infrastructure. Huang on Sunday also said that the Chinese military wouldn’t use Nvidia chips anyway, and previously signaled that China’s Huawei is a legitimate competitor.

“The idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own,” Lutnick said. “You want to keep one step ahead of what they can build, so they keep buying our chips.”

The reversal is a major win for Nvidia. Huang had previously said that the Trump administration’s decision to require a license for the H20 chip in April “effectively closed” the China market. Nvidia said that it could have sold $8 billion in H20 chips in the current quarter before sales were stopped.

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The administration reversed its decision after President Donald Trump met with Huang in Washington last week.

“You want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack,” Lutnick said. “That’s the thinking.”

The H20 chip was introduced in 2022 in response to Biden administration export controls. It’s based on the same underlying technology as Nvidia’s Hopper-generation chips, which are sold in the U.S. as finished systems using H100 or H200 chips.

The U.S. chipmaker took some features out of the H20 in order to sell it to China, including fewer graphics processing unit cores and lower bandwidth connecting separate parts of the chip. But the success of the DeepSeek R1 model suggested that there were many Chinese companies that were just fine with the slowed-down chips. The China-specific H20 is behind Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, the H100 and the H200, Lutnick said.

Nvidia says that it releases new artificial intelligence chips every year and that serious AI developers should always try to get the latest and greatest versions because the technology is improving so quickly.

The best AI chips broadly available from clouds and system makers today are called Blackwell, and come as a GB200 chip with a paired central processing unit as well as B100 and B200 versions. Nvidia also makes a range of Blackwell-based chips for gaming and graphics that can be used for AI, but they’re generally weaker than the biggest chips designed for data centers.

A successor, called Blackwell Ultra, is only now starting to be installed in data centers, and it’s expected to ramp in volume over the next year. In 2027, Nvidia will release “Vera Rubin” chips.

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It’s a huge week for crypto in D.C. But the industry may not get everything it wants

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It's a huge week for crypto in D.C. But the industry may not get everything it wants

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 27, 2025.

Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

It’s “Crypto Week” in Washington.

The cryptocurrency industry is set to notch a major win this week if the House can pass two bills that would set up a long-lobbied-for regulatory framework for digital assets.

The stablecoin bill, known as the GENUIS Act, has already passed the Senate and looks set to become the first standalone crypto measure signed into law should the House do the same.

But the real prize for the industry is a wider and more complex bill on market structure called the CLARITY Act, which faces a more difficult path to President Donald Trump‘s desk.

Seeking CLARITY

The CLARITY Act sets the rules for when an asset is considered a security and overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission versus when it’s considered a commodity that is overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC.

The act is likely to pass the House on Wednesday, given the bipartisan support when the bill cleared two committees. But the path in the Senate is murky, as Democrats could withhold their support over concerns about how Trump and his family are benefiting from crypto.

The Trump family’s growing crypto empire includes $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, a stablecoin, and a decentralized finance firm called World Liberty Financial, among other ventures.

Some lawmakers who backed the narrower stablecoin bill did so with the hopes of seeing the wider market structure package address conflicts of interest.

“President Trump’s crypto corruption distorts the digital asset marketplace,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who voted for the stablecoin bill. “Writing a bill with a corruption caveat for the president sends a clear message — that Congress is not serious about addressing corruption, which we know undermines investors’ faith in capital markets.”

Pushing it to pass

Coinbase attempted to literally sweeten the deal on the CLARITY Act for lawmakers with an advertising push that included handing out about 5,000 chocolate bars around D.C.

The candy wrappers cited a Morning Consult poll that found about “1 in 5” Americans own crypto.

Coinbase, Ripple and other crypto companies are lobbying Congress to put their concerns aside and back the market structure package, anticipating that more regulatory certainty will encourage more investment in crypto.

“When consumers buy and sell and trade these digital assets, they want to know what they’re getting and they want to know that they’re using a reputable intermediary,” Coinbase Vice President of U.S. Policy Kara Calvert told CNBC. “And what this bill does is provide that construct to do that.”

Read more CNBC tech news

The Senate is set to introduce its own market structure bill this month that is expected to differ slightly from the House version.

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., is working with Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and others on the measure.

Other Democrats are planning to work with Republicans on a bill, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who worked on previous market structure bills with Lummis.

“We have a lot of work to do, and we’re going to work on a bipartisan basis over the next month,” she told CNBC in a brief interview in the Capitol.

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