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Skrmetti Calls Google Decision a ‘Win’ For Tennessee

Photo: Firmbee.com on Unsplash

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has called a recent ruling against technology corporation Google a “big win” for the state.

On Monday Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia “ruled that Google violated federal antitrust law,” a statement from Skrmetti’s office said. The lawsuit was originally filed on behalf of several states including Tennessee in October 2020.

Skrmetti said his office was part of the trial team that “proved Google is an illegal monopolist.” These members included J. David McDowell, Chris Dunbar, Austin Ostiguy, and Tyler Corcoran.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act,” court documents said.

The court ruled that the tech company specifically violated Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act on the grounds of “monopolization of their search and advertising business.” It acknowledged that search engines make money through digital advertisements, and that Google has dominated the market “for more than 15 years.”

“Google’s dominance has gone unchallenged for well over a decade,” documents said. “In 2009 80 percent of search queries in the United States already went through Google. By 2020, it was nearly 90 percent and even higher on mobile devices at almost 95 percent.”

Documents said Google has a major advantage over search engines such as Bing through default search engines or “search widgets.” The courts also said Google pays large amounts of money to secure “preloaded defaults” with browser developers, mobile device manufacturers, and wireless carriers.

The company argued that users choose their service over others because of their performance, and that they pre-load their browsers onto products such as Apple and Android for affordability. They also argued that due to the competitive nature of search-engine sites “barriers to entry are not as high as Plaintiffs claim.”

“We will continue to work alongside our AG partners and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to protect consumers from Google’s anticompetitive conduct,” Skrmetti said.

United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said this is a historic win for the American people, and that this “landmark decision holds Google accountable.”

“No company — no matter how large or influential — is above the law. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws,” Garland said in a statement.

Google released a statement attributed to Kent Walker, president of Google’s global affairs, on X (formerly known as Twitter) saying the decision “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”

Walker said he appreciated the court acknowledging the trust that Google has garnered from consumers and that it is “superior” to rivals such as Apple and Mozilla.

“Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal. As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use,” Walker said.

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TN Attorney General Threatens Legal Action Against Fortune 100 Companies For “Racially Discriminatory” Employment Practices

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has signed a letter addressed to Fortune 100 CEOs that threatens legal action if they refuse to “refrain from discriminating on the basis of race, whether under the label of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or otherwise. 

This letter was sent in  response to the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, and was signed by 12 other attorneys general in Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Montana, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

“As the Supreme Court recently emphasized, both our Constitution and our civil rights laws guarantee every American the right to be free from racial discrimination,” said Skrmetti. “The Court’s reasoning means that companies, no matter their motivation, cannot treat people differently based on the color of their skin. Corporate America continues to have many avenues to help disadvantaged people and communities of all races without resorting to crude racial line-drawing.”

While the SCOTUS case Skrmetti cited struck down Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action policies, the letter also noted that the Supreme Court “recognized that federal civil-rights statutes prohibiting private entities from engaging in race discrimination apply at least as broadly as the prohibition against race discrimination found in the Equal Protection Clause.”

The signees argued that “well-intentioned racial discrimination is just as illegal as invidious discrimination.” They also stated that the Supreme Court has “repeatedly and emphatically condemned racial quotas and preferences,” and cited the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1 , 551 U.S. 701

“Sadly, racial discrimination in employment and contracting is all too common among Fortune 100 companies and other large businesses,” the letter said. “In an inversion of the odious discriminatory practices of the distant past, today’s major companies adopt explicitly race-based initiatives which are similarly illegal.”

The letter also stated that explicit racial quotas and preferences in hiring, recruiting, retention, promoting and advancement fall under “discriminatory practices.” It also called out companies such as Goldman Sachs, Apple, and Microsoft for adopting “race-based practices.”

“If your company previously resorted to racial preferences or naked quotas to offset its bigotry, that discriminatory path is now definitively closed. Your company must overcome its underlying bias and treat all employees, all applicants, and all contractors equally, without regard for race,” the letter said.

If companies do not cease to “continue treating people differently because of the color of their skin,” the attorneys general have promised that they will be held accountable.

Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) said that Skrmetti’s move is “an abuse of power” and that he is trying to “undermine economic opportunity for Black workers and business owners. There is an appalling lack of representation in corporate America. For instance, there are only eight Black CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies — and that’s a record high number,” said Lamar.

Lamar also said that if Skrmetti succeeds in “bullying companies into ending their programs,” the consequences will be “devastating.”

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Debt Relief On the Way for Some ITT Tech Students

ITT Tech/Facebook

A 2016 photo from ITT Tech’s Cordvoa campus.

Did you borrow money to attend ITT Tech, the failed, for-profit college? Debt relief may be on the way.

ITT filed bankruptcy in 2016 after investigations by state attorneys general and the U.S. Department of Education. That investigation restricted ITT’s access to federal student aid.
ITT Tech/Facebook

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery said Wednesday a settlement deal will bring $6 million in debt relief for 699 former ITT Tech students in Tennessee.

That settlement is part of a national deal with 42 states and the District of Columbia totaling more than $168 million for more than 18,000 former ITT students.

The settlement is between the states and a company called Student CU Connect CUSO (CUSO). It offered about $189 million in loans to finance students’ tuition at ITT Tech between 2009 and 2011.

“Hundreds of Tennessee students who were simply trying to further their education at ITT Tech were harmed by CUSO,” Slatery said. “This settlement holds CUSO accountable for its abusive lending practices and provides relief to those who attended ITT Tech and incurred debts for a questionable education that they could not repay nor discharge.”
[pullquote-1] The Attorneys General alleged that ITT, with CUSO’s knowledge, offered students temporary credit when they enrolled to cover the gap in tuition between federal student aid and the full cost of the education. That credit was to be repaid before the student’s next academic year, “although ITT and CUSO knew or should have known that most students would not be able to repay the [temporary credit] when it became due,” reads a statement.

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery

Students complained that they thought the temporary credit was like a federal loan and would not be due until six months after they graduated. When it became due, though, ITT ”pressured and coerced students into accepting loans” from CUSO, which for many students had high interest rates, far above rates for federal loans.

“Pressure tactics used by ITT included pulling students out of class and threatening to expel them if they did not accept the loan terms,” reads a statement. “Because students were left with the choice of dropping out and losing any benefit of the credits they had earned – ITT’s credits would not transfer to most other schools – most students enrolled in the CUSO loans.”

Neither ITT nor CUSO told students what the true cost of repayment for the temporary credit would be until after it was converted to a loan. The default rate on the CUSO loans was “extremely high,” about 90 percent, “due to both the high cost of the loans as well as the lack of success ITT graduates had getting jobs that earned enough to make repayment feasible. The defaulted loans continue to affect students’ credit ratings and are usually not dischargeable in bankruptcy.”

CUSO won’t try to collect on the outstanding loans anymore. It will, instead, send notices to borrowers that the debt is cancelled and so are the automatic payments. The company will also update borrower information with credit reporting agencies.

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AGs Urge End of Robocalls

Ronnie Wu | Dreamstime.com

More than 48 billion robocalls were made last year and Attorneys General from across the country urged the U.S. Senate last week to help stop them.

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery joined 54 other Attorneys General in a letter urging lawmakers to enact the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act. The legislation would curb illegal robocalls and phone spoofing, in which consumers are tricked into answering calls because the incoming number appears to be local.

“The state AGs are on the front lines of enforcing do-not-call laws and helping consumers who are harassed and scammed by unwanted telemarketing calls and robocalls,” reads the letter. “Robocalls and telemarketing calls are currently the number one source of consumer complaints at many of our offices, as well as at both the (Federal Communications Commission) and the (Federal Trade Commission).”

Consumers reported losses of more than $290 million thank to fraudulent telemarketers, according to the letter. Consumers Union reported telemarketing scams have been a $9.5 billion out to the U.S. economy.

Robocalls were expected to rise 33 percent in 2018. The actual number — almost 48 billion calls — was up 36 percent over 2017.

The TRACED Act would allow states, federal regulators, and telecom providers to take steps to combat robocalls. The legislation would require voice service providers to participate in a call authentication framework to help block unwanted calls.

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Former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins Calls for Justice Department to Fire Communications Director

From ThinkProgress.com: At the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys conference in Miami this weekend, former Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, who was fired to make way for Karl Rove protege Tim Griffn, offered some advice to incoming Attorney General Michael Mukasey, saying he should fire Justice Department communications director Brian Roehrkasse.

“This guy, frankly, intentionally misled and deceived the press and the public on a number of occasions, and just told outright lies,” Cummins said.

Think Progress links to Roehrkasse’s lies.

Read John Branston’s most recent column on Cummins here.

Thinkprogress.com
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Politics and Justice

Laymen (heck, reporters too) sometimes confuse the various kinds of attorneys general in the U.S. Justice Department.

There is the attorney general of the United States in Washington, D.C. That would be, most recently, Alberto Gonzales, who took office in 2005 and resigned this week.

There is the United States attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, a position appointed by the president. That would be David Kustoff.

And there are assistant United States attorneys in each state. Some of them are career prosecutors. That would include Tim DiScenza, who prosecuted and convicted John Ford and the Tennessee Waltz defendants.

Then there is Bud Cummins.

Cummins used to be the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. He came over to Memphis a few years ago and prosecuted former Shelby County medical examiner O.C. Smith. But his real claim to fame is getting fired by Karl Rove, adviser to President George Bush.

Cummins is one of the “fired U.S. attorneys” that cost Gonzales his job. He was asked to quit on June 5th, 2006, so that former Rove aide J. Timothy Griffin could take his place. He left last December, and he started appearing on CNN early in 2007, when Democrats went public with their charges that Bush and Rove were trying to politically influence the Justice Department. Cummins is a Republican, but he was deemed less politically useful than Griffin, who has since been replaced, too.

Cummins heard about the Gonzales resignation Monday morning.

“I can honestly say I don’t take any personal satisfaction in it,” he told the Flyer this week.

“It’s a sad story,” Cummins said. “There are probably a thousand reasons to admire Gonzales but also a great number of reasons to be disappointed in him. That cost him his credibility in a job where credibility is mandatory.”

Cummins, now working as a consultant in Arkansas, declined to speak about Tennessee Waltz because he is not familiar with the facts in much detail. But he doesn’t think the prosecutions of Ford and others are tainted.

“I know the quality of the professionals actually pursuing the individual investigations,” he said. “I am not concerned that whatever political pressure was brought to bear has caused professional prosecutors to deviate from the nonpartisan pursuit of cases. But it has created an appearance of impropriety. And career professionals are paying a price for that.”

Cummins said he never had any contact with Gonzales before or after June 2006, when he was notified that he was being replaced.

So, does that suggest that the attorney general of the United States and the president and his advisers take a hands-off approach to U.S. attorneys in Tennessee and Arkansas? No, it does not. That would defy common practice and common sense.

Kustoff, who replaced Terry Harris in 2005 after Tennessee Waltz broke in the news, is a former Bush campaign organizer in Tennessee. It is common practice for presidents to appoint U.S. attorneys from their own political party, but they generally do it at the beginning of their terms, not in the middle.

Common sense suggests that back in 2003, when the Tennessee Waltz began, the attorney general (John Ashcroft at the time) was apprised of a sting operation targeting state lawmakers in Tennessee. And that Gonzales was apprised when most of them turned out to be black Democrats.

At a press conference following the Ford sentencing, DiScenza said he has had no personal contact with Gonzales. Kustoff and the FBI special agent in charge, My Harrison, wouldn’t say whether they were in contact with Gonzales or his assistants. They all said Ford’s pending federal trial in Nashville is “not our case.”

But that case cuts to the heart of Ford’s consulting business with TennCare providers, and that is a matter of great local interest.

The public deserves better answers. As Cummins said, there is an appearance of impropriety. Memphis does not exist in a vacuum apart from Nashville and Washington. And the feds are short-changing us on the story.

John Branston is a Flyer senior editor.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Dumb or Dishonest?

I have a 4-year-old daughter who has an amazing gift for telling fanciful tales, making them up on the fly to fit any situation. I’m thinking of loaning her storytelling services to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, since it’s clear she tells much better stories than he does.

I’m not sure I can recall anything so irritatingly painful to watch as Gonzales’ testimony before Congress last week.

A lot of attention is being paid to Gonzales’ account of his 2004 nighttime hospital visit to see then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Oh, he wasn’t there to talk about the Terrorist Surveillance Program with an incapacitated Ashcroft; he was there to talk about another secret program he can’t talk about, because it’s classified. But of course he didn’t talk about any classified material in an insecure hospital room in front of Ashcroft’s wife. He would tell us more, but it’s classified.

Too bad his account is being disputed by nearly everyone involved, including FBI director Robert Mueller and then-acting Attorney General James Comey. But what may be the final nail in his coffin is a document from the director of National Intelligence at the time, John Negroponte, that disputes there was some other surveillance program under discussion.

In other words, if Gonzales really believes he was talking about a different secret program, then Ashcroft wasn’t the only person in the room who was heavily medicated.

And while this part of Gonzales’ testimony is the most legally troubling, I found another part even more disturbing: Questioned by Senator Diane Feinstein about the firing of U.S. attorneys, Gonzales could not answer the basic questions of how many attorneys had been fired — or what they were fired for.

This scandal over the firing of these attorneys has been raging for months. It has been the subject of several congressional hearings, has led to the resignations of six people, and even has Republicans calling for Gonzales to go.

You would think that given all that, Gonzales would have been prepared to answer such simple questions. His dodgy replies made him look like a complete imbecile in front of the entire country.

His testimony leaves only two possible conclusions: Either he is the most incompetent attorney to ever hold a government job or he is hiding something so shocking and dangerous that he’s willing to purposely destroy his reputation and even risk perjury charges to keep it secret.

My bet’s on the latter.

If Gonzales were this incompetent, I can’t see how even his good friend George W. Bush could stand by him. Not only is Bush resisting bipartisan pressure to fire Gonzales, he’s giving him a strong vote of confidence, well beyond “Heckuva job, Brownie” status.

You’ve heard of honor among thieves. It works for liars, too.

At every turn, Bush and his associates are at war with the truth. The president’s every utterance on the war in Iraq has to be sifted to remove the falsehoods. He gives Scooter Libby a get-out-of-jail-free card for his lies. Vice President Dick Cheney can’t seem to pass up an open microphone without making up claims out of thin air. And the attorney general, the person who is in charge of the department that prosecutes people for dishonesty, has become so outrageously dishonest that it’s a wonder he hasn’t been struck by lightning yet.

What Bush, Gonzales & Co. are learning now is the lesson of the boy who cried wolf, that after having been caught lying so many times, no one believes what they say, not even a sizable chunk of their own party. Whatever statements they make — even on important matters of war and national security — are open to increasing skepticism because they continue to abuse the truth, over and over.

That means at a very basic level, they have lost the ability to govern, to carry out policies, and to do the work of the people. We no longer have a viable president, vice president, or attorney general. They are dead weight, an anchor on the ship of state that prevents moving forward and repairing the damage they have wrought. If they truly believed in the oath of office they took, they would lock themselves up in prison for the good of the country.

But since they are incapable of holding anyone accountable for their actions, they will continue along their merry, destructive way until Congress grows a backbone and impeaches the lot of them.

Kirk Caraway is editor of nevadapolitics.com and writes a blog on national issues at kirkcaraway.com.

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Poor, Poor Alberto

If the House Judiciary Committee session last week starring Attorney General Alberto Gonzales produced few revelations about the suspicious dismissal of eight (or nine or more) U.S. attorneys, the hearing did clarify a critical political reality: No matter how discredited he is and no matter how much damage he continues to inflict on the Justice Department, this attorney general will not resign.

What the hearing established most clearly is that most Republicans remain united behind Gonzales despite the clear evidence of his incompetence, dishonesty, and contempt for Congress. Unlike their counterparts in the Senate, none of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee even posed a sharp question to him, let alone urged his resignation. Instead, they acted in partisan lockstep, expressing sympathy for the poor attorney general’s ordeal, pretending that there is no scandal and no stonewall, and insisting that the investigation should end.

The Senate Republicans who upbraided Gonzales last month, such as Arlen Specter and Tom Coburn, certainly have their faults. But they and their colleagues cut an Athenian profile compared to the Republicans in the House, who cannot seem to comprehend why a politicized law-enforcement system is a danger to them as well as their enemies.

Obviously, Republicans have paid no attention to the eloquent warnings of their committee’s chairman, John Conyers, explaining why this scandal jeopardizes the most important asset of the Justice Department — namely, “its reputation for integrity and independence.” Then again, listening to them for hours was a powerful reminder that many of them may simply be too stupid to comprehend what Conyers was talking about.

Consider Florida representative Ric Keller: “Tell me what your top two priorities are going to be over the next 20 months that you’d like to accomplish,” he inquired sunnily.

“I’ll give you three,” answered Gonzales, who went on to recall his meeting with the president on September 11, 2001, which made him want to keep America safe. He also mentioned his aversion to violent crime and gangs and then held up his arm to show a wristband that was given to him by a man whose daughter had been murdered by a sex offender. That wristband reminds him that he wants to keep America’s children safe, too.

Keller followed up with equal rigor: “As a prominent Cabinet member, U.S. attorney, or U.S. attorney general, you could leave today and make $1 million a year at a law firm pretty easily, but you’re staying on and want to stay on. Is it because of your passion for those three things, violent crime, terrorism, and getting after child predators?”

Much of the Republican questioning was similarly unedifying. Texas representative Louie Gohmert, a former state judge, spent his time rehashing the false comparison to the Clinton administration’s request for the resignations of all of the U.S. attorneys after Bill Clinton took office in 1993. “Was that a crime?” he demanded indignantly. “No,” said Gonzales.

And let’s not forget Virginia’s Randy Forbes. Apparently, Forbes meant to arouse sympathy for the beleaguered attorney general because he has so many, many employees to oversee. First, he asked how many people work for the Justice Department, and the attorney general replied that there are about 110,000. Then he asked how many of those employees are lawyers — and inadvertently revealed that Gonzales did not know this most basic fact about his department.

“Ten thousand to 15,000,” said the attorney general — a differential of 50 percent. But then again, his entire defense, as he reiterated repeatedly under questioning from the Democrats, is that he didn’t know what his former aides Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling had done in his name when they compiled the hit list of U.S. attorneys. After all, he had signed a secret document turning over his authority to those two junior political operatives, whose only qualification to bully their betters was their connection to Karl Rove.

Before last week’s hearing, The New York Times reported that Gonzales believes he has “weathered the storm” and can continue in office despite his diminished status in the White House and on Capitol Hill and the widespread public belief that he is covering up a serious scandal. And he is right, unless Democrats and the handful of responsible Republicans have the courage to press their investigation to its logical conclusion: Gonzales’ impeachment.

Joe Conason writes for Salon.com andThe New York Observer.