As US Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to take the stage against former President Donald Trump as her candidate for the White House in November, her secret weapon appears to be a high-powered lawyer who also has a surprising additional task — defending Google in a landmark antitrust lawsuit that could reshape the tech giant’s future.
Karen Dunn, a partner at the prestigious Paul, Weiss law firm, has been chosen by Harris to coach her campaign. Dunn reportedly prepared Harris for her first debate against Trump in the 2024 US elections. But while Dunn is busy preparing the vice president for the debate, she is also defending Google in a blockbuster case brought by the Joe Biden administration, accusing the company of illegally monopolizing the online advertising market.
Dunn’s dual role has raised concerns among antitrust experts, who worry that his close ties to the Harris camp could undermine the government’s aggressive efforts against Google. They argue that it is an “outrageous” conflict of interest for the vice president to seek advice from a lawyer representing a company his own administration is suing.
Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project told the New York Times, “It’s clear you can’t serve both sides.” “If these were legal matters, ethically she would be prevented from doing what she’s doing,” he said.
Dunn, who has prepared Democratic candidates for debates since 2008, delivered Google’s opening statement in the high-stakes trial on Monday, September 9, two days ahead of the most anticipated presidential debate ahead of the US elections since Biden quit the presidential race. Hours later, the same day, Dunn left the Virginia courtroom to join Harris’ team in Pittsburgh, where they were finalizing their debate preparations.
The 48-year-old litigator is no stranger to the revolving door between Big Law and Democratic politics. She started out as a legislative reporter on Capitol Hill for Rep. Nita Lowey of New York. She was hired in 1999 as the second staffer on Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, with whom she worked during and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She then left politics for a while to attend Yale Law School. But, by 2008, she was working on presidential campaigns with Clinton, and then later with Barack Obama.
“It’s a mixture of tough love,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview with Karen Dunn earlier this month. “As a lawyer she pays attention to details, but in her communications work she has an ability to see the big picture, and that’s a really rare quality,” Clinton added.
Dunn has represented tech giants like Apple and Uber and even helped Amazon founder Jeff Bezos prepare for congressional hearings. In 2021, he won a landmark lawsuit against the organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville far-right rally.
But Dunn’s current feat may be her most high-profile work yet. As she argued Google’s case in court, her advice to Harris played a key role in shaping the outcome of a debate that has been pivotal in the 2024 race. And with the Justice Department seeking to spin off Google’s advertising business, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
“One can imagine that her stature in Harris’s world has increased further after this debate — which could be worrisome if she ever negotiates a potential settlement with the Justice Department under Harris,” said Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project.
Republicans have already seized on the controversy, with one top Trump adviser calling it proof that Harris will “never stand up to Big Tech.” House Republicans are demanding answers from Attorney General Merrick Garland about how he’s handling potential conflicts of interest.
Neither Google nor the Harris campaign have yet commented on the issue.
For now, Dunn shows no signs of slowing down. As he told the New York Times in 2019, the key to winning a debate is engaging your opponent in a way that challenges them and then creating an opportunity to win, preferably at someone else’s expense. With his dual roles, Dunn is on the verge of challenging the boundaries of what is acceptable in the worlds of high-stakes politics and law.
