[Read: Tech CEOs’ opening statements for Wednesday’s antitrust hearing]
The memo also points out some of the obstacles that may be awaiting attempts to crack down on tech companies through legislation, a possible sign of good news for the industry.
Republican employees even raise questions about future cooperation for the panel’s investigation, which for more than a year has shown rare signs of bipartisan cooperation.
“Although this investigation began as a bipartisan effort, the majority approach is raising serious concerns about whether it can continue on that basis, or simply reflects the majority’s efforts to promote predetermined conclusions under an unearned banner of bipartisanship,” read in the memo.
Republicans also argue that the Congressional investigation is duplicated, as President Donald Trump’s Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are already investigating the four tech giants.
“The legislature is unnecessarily taking over the job for which it is poorly equipped,” says the memo. “Even if this audience suggests that one of these companies has violated antitrust laws, that could not establish systemic problems with current antitrust laws. Changing the laws in response to such findings would be premature. “
And it lists the Republican Party’s allegations of bias in Silicon Valley, charges that the tech giants deny, as a main issue for the audience, that Democrats had been scheduled to file on the charges. of anti-competitive conduct from Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. Democrats, including Chief Justice Jerry Nadler of New York, have dismissed the bias allegations as unfounded and politically motivated.
“The political bias in big technology must be criticized, but the antitrust will not solve it,” says the head of a section of the memo.
The memorandum also argues that the global coronavirus pandemic is a reason for Congress to proceed with caution over the new antitrust legislation.
“Arguably, Congress should act with special deliberation as the economy seeks to recover from the effects of COVID,” the note read.
Russell Dye, a spokesman for the committee’s Republicans, blamed Democrats for releasing the document.
“It is truly regrettable that an internal document related to a sensitive investigation by Congress was leaked to the press the night before a seminal hearing on the antitrust law,” it said in a statement. “Democrats are clearly trying to undermine what was supposed to be a bipartisan investigation.”
A spokesman for Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (DR.I.) declined to comment.
The leading Republican in the judiciary, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, has criticized committee Democrats for failing to organize the successful session at the full committee level, which would give more members the opportunity to storm CEOs.
And he made a last-minute appeal for the committee to add Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to the audience list. Republican lawmakers are eager to question Dorsey about the social media company’s handling of Trump’s tweets. The company offered the committee a briefing in lieu of their testimony, according to a source familiar with the plans, who spoke anonymously to discuss the private deliberations.
The division during Wednesday’s hearing is the last instance of members of the Republican Judiciary in dispute with the leadership of the Democrats in the technological investigation. Two other top Republicans accused Democrats in a February letter of having “preconceived conclusions that America’s big tech companies are inherently bad.” Cicilline disputed the claim at the time.
Despite recent reprimands, other Republican lawmakers on the committee have continued to praise his Democratic leadership for their bipartisan research. “I am very impressed with the bipartisan and cooperative nature of the process we are going through,” Rep. Ken Buck (Republican of Colorado) told POLITICO in an interview last week.
And several of the committee’s actions in the investigation have been endorsed by Democrats and Republicans, including a May letter demanding that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos testify before the panel.
Buck added that he expects bipartisan acceptance of the report that the committee is expected to issue at the conclusion of its investigation.
“Everything I know about the writing of that report tells me that he will be bipartisan and very attentive in his approach, and therefore I do not anticipate any objection,” he said.
Part of the memo echoes the views of the Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby in the United States, which has Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google as members. The House launched a website on Tuesday making many of the same points.
Many of the footnotes to the note cite Republican antitrust officials, including former FTC Presidents Tim Muris and Maureen Ohlhausen; former FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright; and Deb Garza, a former Justice Department antitrust official. Muris has represented Facebook and Intel, while Wright’s clients include Google and Qualcomm. Wright and Muris teach at George Mason University Law School. Wright heads the law school’s antitrust institute, which received funding from Google and Amazon, according to a New York Times report.
Garza, who also chaired a Congressional panel appointed by Congress in 2007 to modernize antitrust competition, is a partner at Covington & Burling, which frequently represents Facebook, included in his deal to buy WhatsApp.
The memorandum’s findings, that US antitrust laws are working and need not be changed for the digital age, coincide with traditional Republican antitrust views and indicate that any legislative proposals that panel Democrats seek to include in the report end of the investigation may have difficulty obtaining broad bipartisan support.
