BigLaw

Alumni of Gibson Dunn, the law firm that helped Chevron go after Steven Donziger, have influential executive branch jobs under Biden.

Earlier this month, Biden nominated Elizabeth Prelogar for the position of Solicitor General. Prelogar, who has served as Acting Solicitor General since January, was an expected choice – her nomination was met with little more than a shrug of acquiescence and lingering questions about why the position had gone unfilled for so long. Despite Prelogar’s long history of working within the Department of Justice, her recent stint at the corporate BigLaw firm Cooley LLP and many of the decisions she made as Acting Solicitor General raise troubling questions about conflicts of interest and her commitment to fighting hard for the public interest.  

Here at the Revolving Door Project, we’ve been very loud about the damaging impact of BigLaw on the executive branch and the myth of corporate BigLaw attorneys as neutral arbiters of laws involving their own clients and bottom lines. Recent revelations about former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark and his role in the attempts to undermine the 2020 election have further underscored the absurdity of these arguments, calling into question the continued influence of corporate BigLaw in the Biden Administration.

“As a private corporate attorney, MacBride defended fossil fuel companies, Wall Street giants, Big Tech monopolies, and a myriad of other corporate industries,” the groups wrote. “His past work fighting vigorously and successfully on behalf of corporations against the public interest disqualifies him from a role in the administration.”

Over the course of its decade-long partnership with Facebook, Latham has fought consumer data breach litigation, quashed federal investigations into corrupt practices by Facebook contractors, and advised on mergers and acquisitions that have cemented Facebook’s tech monopoly status (including its highly-controversial 2014 purchase of WhatsApp, a merger that is currently being challenged by the FTC).

There is no delicate way to put it: Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has been a striking failure so far. More than 10 percent of the way through this presidential term, Attorney General Merrick Garland has failed to remove Trump holdovers; is treating Trump as a completely typical president and refusing to prosecute his many crimes; is not reversing dangerous Trump-era legal positions; and is freely allowing corporate capture of his department.

Garland’s disappointing tenure is detrimental to progressive plans for many issues — criminal justice, police violence, labor rights, immigration, antitrust, and white collar crime prosecution, among others — but his potential to wreak havoc on necessary climate action is most staggering considering the existential stakes.

New financial disclosure filings reveal that Elizabeth Rosenberg, Biden’s pick for Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing, was a consultant for ExxonMobil and a Big Oil-aligned corporate law firm.

Leslie Caldwell, a top corporate criminal defense partner at BigLaw giant Latham & Watkins, is in the running for a U.S. Attorney job under Biden. Her record championing draconian anti-hacking laws and helping big corporations evade accountability for white-collar crimes should preclude her from any role in the Biden administration.

Michael Connor of WilmerHale has been appointed to run a surprisingly important agency in efforts to mitigate the climate crisis.

Brian Netter, a corporate attorney who represented big business in wage theft cases and litigated against workers who sued companies for mismanaging their retirement funds, was just appointed to the Department of Justice.

If appointed, Turner would be a transparent and flagrant case study in the workings of the revolving door, which means he would be right in line with the IP orthodoxy PTO has upheld.

As the report explores, Gibson Dunn’s ties to the Republican Party run back to the Reagan era.

Shelanski, Obama’s second OIRA administrator, now represents monopolies like Facebook and Tyson Foods. His regulatory skepticism and disdain for the emerging antitrust movement would make him a disastrous pick for any role in the Biden administration.

President Biden announced last week the appointment of Michael Connor to be the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works within the Department of Defense, making him responsible for the entire Army Corps of Engineers.

Karp’s own “strong ethical code” includes not just mass payoffs to Democratic politicians, as I wrote about last year, but more relevantly, organized intimidation of the press for ever daring to report unflatting facts about Paul, Weiss.