Month: January 2023

The U.S. Justice Department filed its second antitrust lawsuit against Google in just over two years.  The Justice Department, along with the attorneys general of multiple states, filed an antitrust suit Tuesday against Google “for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products.” The Department’s earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 under the Trump administration, accused Google of using its alleged monopoly power to cut off competition for internet search through exclusionary agreements. That case is expected to go to trial in September.

The second lawsuit, filed in the District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia. is focused on Google’s online advertising business, and seeks to make Google divest parts of the business. The Department of Justice said in a news release Tuesday: “As a result of its illegal monopoly, and by its own estimates, Google pockets on average more than 30% of the advertising dollars that flow through its digital advertising technology products … Google’s anticompetitive conduct has suppressed alternative technologies, hindering their adoption by publishers, advertisers, and rivals.”  The DOJ emphasized that the search advertising market addressed in the 2020 suit is different from the digital advertising technology market addressed in Tuesday’s lawsuit.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Google has been “wielding its dominance across digital advertising markets to force more publishers and advertisers to use its products; and thwarting the ability to use competing products … Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.” 

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A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence told the National Archives and Records Administration that a “small number” of documents with classified markings were discovered last week at Pence’s Indiana home, and turned over to the FBI. Attorney Greg Jacob, who served as Pence’s top lawyer in the White House, told an official with the Archives in a letter dated Jan. 18 that a Pence aide conducted searched the home last week, following the discovery of classified documents at President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and former office at a Washington, D.C., think tank. Jacob wrote that “the additional records appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former Vice President at the end of the last Administration … Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence.”

Jacob added that Pence engaged outside counsel ‘with experience in handling classified documents’ and it was during the search that the documents that could “potentially contain sensitive or classified information interspersed throughout the records” were found.  Jacob added: “Vice President Pence’s counsel, however, is unable to provide an exact description of the folders or briefing materials that may contain sensitive or classified information because counsel did not review the contents of the documents once an indicator of potential classification was identified. Vice President Pence immediately secured those documents in a locked safe pending further direction on proper handling from the National Archives.”

In a second letter dated Jan. 22, Jacob said the FBI went to Pence’s Indiana home the night of Jan. 19 to collect the documents, and the transfer was facilitated by Pence’s personal attorney, Two additional boxes were found containing “courtesy copies” of papers from Pence’s vice presidency.  Pence offered to transfer the four boxes to the Archives for a review to ensure they did not contain original documents that qualified as presidential records and therefore had to be turned over to the agency under federal law.  Pence also informed the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Tuesday of the discovery, and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, said “he [Pence] has agreed to fully cooperate with congressional oversight and any questions we have about the matter. Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people.”

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