GOOGLE ATTEMPTS QUIET TAKEOVER
OF TRUMP WHITE HOUSE
WH advisor cautions: “Google head Schmidt, a top Hillary advisor, cozies up to Trump”
BY JEROME CORSI
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
NEW YORK – Eric Schmidt, the founder of the multinational
conglomerate Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, is making a
run to become a Trump insider, intending hopefully to reverse the
political damage done by the strong support he and Google gave to the
Obama administration for eight years and to Hillary Clinton in her 2016
presidential campaign.On Dec. 14, 2016, Schmidt was included in a group of prominent tech industry executives that met with then President-elect Donald Trump in a much-publicized meeting.
Then on Jan. 17, 2017, Politico reported that Schmidt was sited at an unannounced visit to Trump Tower, where he lunched privately with Jared Kushner, Trump’s real estate magnate son-in-law married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka in 2009, who has emerged to be named a Senior Advisor to his father-in-law in the White House.
Schmidt’s charm offensive
Trump’s long-time advisor Roger Stone expressed to INFOWARS.com concerns shared by many close to the Trump administration that Schmidt is angling to create a personal relationship with Trump so as to continue the business advantages Google enjoyed when Barack Obama was president.
“Google’s Eric Schmidt was among Hillary’s biggest donors and closest advisors,” Stone told INFOWARS.com in an exclusive interview. “Schmidt enjoyed a revolving-door relationship with the Obama administration that secured for Google key role in writing regulations to Google’s advantage.”
Stone pointed out that Schmidt “bet on the wrong horse – big time” in supporting Hillary.
“Now, Schmidt is engaged in massive damage control, thinking he charm his way into Trump’s inner circle,” Stone continued.
“The problem is that Schmidt and Google have a history of supporting Democratic candidates and leftist causes,” he stressed. “The American public has no idea how extensively Schmidt has used his influence with Hillary and with Obama to wind Google tentacles into the heart and inner workings of a federal bureaucracy staffed from the top-down by left-leaning Hillary lovers.”
Stone emphasized those in key positions in the Trump administration must be on the alert to a “Google charm offensive” launched by Schmidt to cozy up to Trump in an effort to re-establish with Trump some of the influence Google enjoyed with the Democrats.
Google strategy to worm into Trump
“Google was definitely trying to advance its policy agenda by cozying up to Trump,” Daniel Stevens, the acting executive director of the Washington-based non-profit 501(c)(3) watchdog Campaign for Accountability told Infowars. “It’s what Google did with Hillary. As Hillary’s campaign was kicking-off, Google cozied up to the Clinton campaign. Eric Schmidt sent off emails offering advice to Hillary’s top campaign managers, in an effort to make himself indispensable to the campaign.”
Stevens noted Eric Schmidt even created an under-the-radar startup technology company for Hillary’s Campaign, The Groundwork, headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., a few blocks from Hillary’s campaign office. The Groundwork became a major vendor Hillary’s campaign, implementing a policy designed to emulate Barack Obama’s highly successful micro-targeting of voters in 2012, in a plan to feed this data to activists working in the field through the Obama campaign’s activist arm, Organizing for America.
As noted by Quartz.com in an article published Oct. 9, 2015, Hillary’s decision to hire former Google executive Stephanie Hannon as her 2016 presidential campaign’s chief technology officer, as well as hiring “a host of ex-Googlers” as high-ranking technical staff at the Obama White House evidenced the “shrinking distance between Google and the Democratic Party.”
“It now appears that Schmidt is trying to reach out to the Trump White House in a similar way,” Stevens continued. “It’s in Google’s interest to cozy up to Trump now that he is president and that is what Schmidt is trying to do.”
That Google has already made inroads into the Trump camp was clear to the Campaign for Accountability in that Joshua Wright, who co-wrote a Google-funded paper while on the faculty of George Mason University and works at Google’s main antitrust law firm, has been advising the Trump transition team on competition issues, while Alex Pollock, of the Google-funded R Street Institute, has also been named to oversee the transition at the FTC.
At the same time, it is not clear the Trump administration fully appreciates the extent to which Eric Schmidt and Google top executives have supported and advanced Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s far-left policy agenda. Leaked emails released by Wikileaks revealed that John Podesta, Hillary’s 2016 campaign chairman, had warned Neera Tanden, the President of the Center for American Progress, “I hope Hillary truly understands how batshit crazy David Brock is.”
Radical Democratic Party political operative David Brock is the chief architect behind promoting the leftist “Fake News” campaign. Brock’s advice was key to promoting Google to take steps to prohibit some 340 “fake news” sites in November and December alone from using Google ads for monetization. Last week Google confirmed that since November, some 550 sites have been reviewed, resulting in permanent bans for nearly 200 and temporary bans for another 140, as reported by Variety on Jan. 25, 2017.
Google refuses to disclose the identity of the websites Google has targeted to block as “fake news.”
Trump supporters should remain legitimately concerned that by buying into Brock’s campaign against “fake news,” the ultimate goal of the far-left is to ban sites like Infowars.com for exposing the far left agenda, wile protecting mainstream media news organizations and websites like CNN, despite proof CNN has reported anti-Trump stories proven to be false or otherwise untruthful.
Trump has repeatedly attacked CNN as “not a legitimate news agency” because of the extent to which CNN has engaged in one-sided, distorted and intentionally misleading anti-trump “fake news” slanted to benefit far-left candidates like Hillary Clinton, while striving to protect the legacy of the Obama administration from criticism.
Google’s revolving door
“When President Obama announced his support last week for a Federal Communications Commission plan to open the market for cable set-top boxes — a big win for consumers, but also for Google— the cable and telecommunications giants who used to have a near-stranglehold on tech policy were furious,” wrote David Dayen in the Intercept on April 22, 2016, evidencing Schmidt’s ability to get Obama administration regulations written to benefit Google. “AT&T chief lobbyist Jim Cicconi lashed out at what he called White House intervention on behalf of ‘the Google proposal.’”
According to a report published by Campaign for Accountability on April 26, 2016, White House logs show Google had “unrivaled access” to the Obama administration with Google representatives attending 427 meetings in the White House from the time Obama took office, on Jan. 20, 2009, and October 2015 – a meeting every 5.8 days – more than once a week – averaging one meeting every 4.1 working days.
The Campaign for Accountability study further established a “revolving door” with Google hiring an Obama administration government official or a Google employee becoming an Obama administration employee. “The dataset highlights the astonishing level of traffic between the two in both directions: 251 people either moved from Google into government or vice-versa, since Obama took office,” the Center for Accountability noted.
“Over the course of just 15 years, Google has grown into arguably the most powerful company on the globe by becoming its biggest data-mining operation,” said Anne Weismann the executive director for the Campaign for Accountability Executive when the report on Google was released last year. “Google knows more about us than we know about ourselves, but we know surprisingly little about Google and how it actually operates.”
“The company’s business practices and political influence, as well as how it uses our private information, are disturbingly opaque.”
Among those benefiting from Google’s “revolving door” relationship with the Obama administration is Megan Smith, the former Google vice president of business development who served as the United States’ Chief Technology Officer in the Obama White House.
Another is Johanna Shelton, Google’s director of public policy and top lobbyist, Johanna Shelton, According to Watchdog.org, Johanna Shelton, visited White House officials 128 times, including 4 times with President Obama himself, between the time Obama took office in 2009 and October 2015, compared to lobbyists for other companies in the telecommunications and cable industry that visited the White House a combined 124 times in the same time span. The Daily Mail concluded that Shelton visited the Obama White House more than 18 of the top 50 lobbyist spenders combined.
Eric Schmidt’s personal familiarity with Obama stretches back at least to Nov. 14, 2007, when then Sen. Barack Obama, a 2008 presidential hopeful, visited Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, to meet with Schmidt and take questions from Google employees, as part of the “Candidates at Google” series.
On June 23, 2011, ConsumerWatchdog.org wrote the White House legal counsel, advising of the group’s concern about the Obama administration’s “inappropriate relationship with Google while the company is under criminal investigating,” insisting that Schmidt as Google’s executive chairman, and Marissa Meyer, a Google vice president had been invited unadvisedly to be guests at a then recent White House state dinner honoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Allowing such executives to hobnob at a gala White House event inevitably sends a message that the Administration supports them and undercuts the ability of federal investigators to proceed with their case in a fair and unbiased way,” ConsumerWatchdog.org president Jamie Court wrote in the letter.
In an article published June 24, 2011, Politico documented the precise nature of the legal conflicts of interest involved in Schmidt and Meyer attending the White House state dinner.
“Google is reportedly the subject of an antitrust investigation by the FTC, and Justice is reviewing its $400 million purchase of online advertising firm Admeld,” Politico noted. “In addition, Justice, the FDA and the Rhode Island U.S. attorney are reportedly looking into allegations that Google profited from selling online ads to illegal online pharmacies.”
Politico stressed that despite these on-going investigations, “Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Vice President Marissa Mayer were guests at last month’s State Dinner to honor German Chancellor Angela Merkel.”
All investigations ended without Google facing anti-trust charges or criminal prosecutions:
- On Dec. 2, 2011, the New York Times reported the Justice Department approved Google’s $400 million acquisition of Admeld, an online display advertising company.
- On Jan. 3, 2015, Forbes reported the FTC concluded its investigation of the Admeld acquisition, concluding there was no basis for an anti-trust case to proceed.
- On Aug. 30, 2011, the New York Times reported the Justice Department had entered into a non-prosecution agreement with Google that closed a FDA investigation into charges Google had received advertising revenue through acquired companies, including Admeld, that allowed Canadian pharmacies to sell prescription drugs in the United States in violation of federal law.
In an email dated April 2, 2014, released by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman John Podesta wrote Hillary’s campaign manager Robby Mook about a meeting he had just completed with Google’s Eric Schmidt.
“I met with Eric Schmidt tonight. As David reported, he’s ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn’t pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn’t seem like he wanted to push others out,” Podesta wrote. “Clearly wants to get going. He’s still in DC tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the afternoon. I think it’s worth doing. You around? If you are, and want to meet with him, maybe the four of us can get on the phone in the a.m.”
In another Wikileaks document, an attachment to a memo Mook wrote to Podesta and Clinton aid and legal adviser Cheryl Mills, dated Oct. 26, 2014, Mook detailed the extensive work “Eric Schmidt’s group” was undertaking with the campaign.
As noted by the Daily Caller, the attachment was a memo originally sent to Hillary by Teddy Goff, the former digital director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign who had transitioned to Hillary’s 2016 campaign, in October 2014, six months before Hillary announced her run to the White House.
In the memo, Goff stressed the importance of Schmidt in constructing the back-end infrastructure of the Clinton campaign website. She wrote the following:
“We have selected a team of developers, unaffiliated with Eric [Schmidt], to build the front-end of your website — a relatively simple process that does not need to have begun yet. These are former employees of mine in whom I have the highest confidence. They are apprised of what Eric is building but not dependent on it, having identified commercially available products for all mission-critical functions in the event Eric’s group is delayed or otherwise derailed.”
Goff continued, noting she had “instructed Eric’s team” to build the “back-end of the website, the ability to accept donations (along with associated features, most importantly the ability to store credit card information), and the ability to acquire email addresses.” She noted these were “core functionalities” that had contributed to Obama’s 2012 electoral success. This appears to be the genesis of the thinking that led Schmidt to create The Groundwork to create Hillary’s 2016 campaign technological infrastructure.
According to leaked documents released by Guccifer 2.0, Eric Schmidt, valued by Forbes as having a net worth of $11.8 billion, has personally donated $118,866.34 to the Clinton Foundation.
There is no doubt that Schmidt used that wealth to bet heavily that Hillary Clinton would be president in 2017. According to OpenSecrets.org, Alphabet Inc. employees contributed $1.5 million to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, making Google the second largest source of campaign contributions that Clinton received.
The Campaign for Accountability’s “Google Transparency Project” found “at least 57 people were affiliated with both Clinton—in her presidential campaign, in her State Department, at her family foundation—and with Google or related entities. In addition, 10 people who worked under Clinton at the State Department later joined the New America Foundation, a Google-friendly think tank where Google’s Eric Schmidt served as chairman and was one of its top donors.”
The “Google Transparency Project” report made clear Google executives and employees “bet heavily on a Clinton victory, hoping to extend the company’s influence on the Obama White House.” The report continued to note that Google executives and employees “lost that bet, and are left scrambling to find an entrée into the Trump Administration.”
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