The Intercept bureau chief: Biden’s top candidate for DOJ antitrust division previously represented Google

Ryan Grim, the D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept, said Tuesday that President-elect Joe Biden’s top candidate to run the Department of Justice’s antitrust division previously represented Google in antitrust cases.

The D.C. bureau chief cited his report on Hill.TV’s “Rising” that Renata Hesse is a leading candidate to serve as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s antitrust division. Her potential appointment would come after the Trump administration launched an antitrust lawsuit against Google. 

“A lawyer who previously represented Google in some antitrust cases with her co-counsel Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is the leading candidate to be the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, along with a number of other corporate attorneys, who have a lot of work on the merger side,” Grim said.

Grim said Democrats, in general, are not against the tech industry’s structure of having “a handful of oligarchs that are basically dictating terms.” Instead, he said these lawmakers want them “to behave in a certain way” by keeping Parler offline and removing QAnon accounts.

“But they don’t step back and say what is it about the structure of this industry that is so destructive to public good, and that’s where the anti-monopoly movement comes in,” he said.


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