Ted Cruz: Hired gun for Google

[ND-Dem]

When the Texas attorney general opened an investigation into Google’s alleged anticompetitive practices in 2010, the Web behemoth turned to an unlikely ally for help: tea party hero Ted Cruz.

Back then, Cruz wasn’t the Republican senator from Texas and likely presidential candidate that he is today. He was a lawyer in private practice, having stepped down as solicitor general for the Lone Star State in 2008. During the five years he had previously spent in the attorney general’s office, however, he made important friends. He established a close relationship with Greg Abbott, the then attorney general who has since ascended to the Texas governor’s mansion. “I was his mentor,” Abbott said of Cruz in a 2014 interview.

Facing the threat of an antitrust lawsuit from the state attorney general, Google hired Cruz to represent its interests before the agency where Cruz himself had worked just over two years earlier and where his mentor, Abbott, still called the shots. The future political star met with a top Abbott deputy on Google’s behalf in August 2010, and Cruz then accompanied a team of antitrust lawyers from Google and a Palo Alto, Calif.-based law firm to three additional meetings at the agency, according to a Cruz spokesman and visitors’ logs for the Texas attorney general’s office.

Texas’ investigation into Google was subsequently closed without action... Rick Tyler, a Cruz spokesman, said there was nothing inappropriate about Cruz bringing this business before his old colleagues. Tyler insisted that while Cruz was a member of Google’s litigation team during the investigation, he did not lobby his ex-employer to quash the probe. “Cruz was acting in his private practice, as being retained by Google for his expertise in antitrust law,” Tyler said. “It’s completely appropriate that he was engaged to do that.”

But Texas government watchdog groups view things differently...“What we’re seeing is a guy who’s selling his influence, selling his access,” said Craig McDonald, the director of the liberal nonprofit organization Texans for Public Justice...

http://news.yahoo.com/when-google-hired-ted-cruz--was-it-lawyering-or-lobbying-224937497.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Does his wife still work for Goldman Sachs?

Sleazy Canadian.

[ND-Dem]

2. she's a managing director. makes you wonder who's really behind the tea party, eh?

Cruz, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in economics and international relations from CMC in 1994, is a managing director in the Private Wealth Management Group at Goldman Sachs, Texas. She and her two partners work with clients to implement high net worth portfolios across a range of investments and asset classes, including complex derivatives products, private equity, hedge funds, single stock risk management, U.S. and international equities, and fixed income.

Ms. Cruz began her career as an investment banker with JPMorgan in New York, focusing on international structured finance and subsequently on Latin America mergers and acquisitions.

In 2000, she served on the Bush 2000 Campaign in Austin as one of President George W. Bush's three economic advisors. She also served in the Administration as the economic director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council at the White House, advising the President and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. She also is a former director at the U.S. Treasury Department and was special policy assistant to Ambassador Robert B. Zoellick, then Chief U.S. international trade negotiator.

In addition to her private-sector work, Heidi served on the Board of Directors of Living Water International, dedicated to providing clean water and sanitation equipment in the developing world. Her publications include the book chapter, "Expanding Opportunity Through Free Trade," in Thank You, President Bush; a chapter in Exchange Rate Policies for Emerging Market Economies; and a Harvard Case Study: "American International Group." She also is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

After graduating from CMC, Ms. Cruz received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a master's of European Business from Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium.

http://www.cmc.edu/rdschool/discover/boardofadvisors.php

yeah, he's a real outsider...

what bullshit they want us to eat

[ND-Dem]

3. kick

[2naSalit]

4. No wondering about it. n/t