Leaked Docs Show Obama FTC Gave Google Its Monopoly After Google Execs Helped Obama Get Re-Elected
Eight years ago, the Federal Trade Commission had the chance to face down Google — the giant of Silicon Valley whose power now alters the free flow of information at a global scale, distorts market access for businesses large and small, and changes the nature of independent thought in ways the world has never experienced.
Instead, the FTC blinked — and blinked hard, choosing to close the investigation in early 2013. A remarkable leak to Politico of agency documents about the 2012 Google investigation reveals that, despite ample evidence of market distortions and threats to competition presented by the agency’s lawyers, the five commissioners of the FTC deferred instead to speculative claims by their economists.
Records and reporting about the 2012 investigation suggest the FTC did so while bending to political pressure from the Obama White House — which was, in turn, bending to political pressure from Google. William Kovacic, a former FTC chair under President George W. Bush, reviewed the more than 300 pages of documents leaked to Politico and concluded the agency overlooked “what many experts and regulators would consider clear antitrust violations,” calling the specificity of issues outlined “breathtaking.”
In short, where we find ourselves today — with Google as the primary filter of the world’s information, engaging in a network of exclusionary contracts and anti-competitive conduct, and subject to an antitrust lawsuit led by the Department of Justice and joined by 48 state attorneys general — could have, and should have, been avoided.
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Joe Biden boasted last fall from his basement that he had the best “voter fraud organization” in the country. We thought it was one of his typical malapropisms, but it turns out, he may not have been kidding around.
Beginning last year, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook joined with Google and other high-tech companies and NGOs to grant hundreds of millions of dollars to fund already taxpayer-funded elections across the country, with the express purpose of defeating Donald Trump. A public-interest law group says those dollars were used to take over election offices and use local government apparatus to turn out Democrat voters to get rid of Trump. As previously reported in December by PJ Media colleague J. Christian Adams, this was done to great effect on behalf of Joe Biden in multiple cities and counties throughout the swing and other states.
Now, the evidence is piling up even higher and deeper.
Private money influenced the the 2020 presidential election.
Green Bay, Wisconsin offers a stunning illustration of the harmful influence of that private money on public elections, and is a stark reminder of the need for integrity at the ballot box and in the counting room.
— Phillip Kline (@PhillDKline) March 19, 2021
The Amistad Law Project, a project of the Thomas More Society, a public-interest research group, looked into the funding of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). The latest fruits of that investigation into its election efforts have begun to be revealed. Public disclosures, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and other findings have centered on Wisconsin’s and Philadelphia’s experiences with the CTCL, with more revelations to come from other cities and counties.
While the pretext for this “Zuck Bucks,” as some call them, funding was to pay for extra COVID expenses, there was far more going on behind the scenes, according to the Amistad director, former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline.