Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren The first several months of the Biden presidency were heady times for Washington’s class of antitrust crusaders, who hailed the appointment of three prominent Big Tech skeptics. There was TIM WU leaving Columbia University for a job on the National Economic Council, LENA KHAN leading the Federal Trade Commission and, finally, JONATHAN KANTER heading up the Justice Department’s antitrust division. So it’s been something of a shock to those who emblazoned “Wu & Khan & Kanter” on celebratory coffee mugs to find Biden’s West Wing suddenly looking hospitable to senior aides with Silicon Valley ties – to one tech giant in particular. The administration’s new communications director, BEN LABOLT, was recently the personal spokesman for Facebook founder and CEO MARK ZUCKERBERG and his wife PRISCILLA CHAN. Chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS, who came on last month, served on the company’s board. They join LOUISA TERRELL, who’s been JOE BIDEN’s legislative affairs director for the duration of his presidency and was Facebook’s public policy director and a registered lobbyist for the company a decade ago. Biden’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for bipartisan legislation “to hold Big Tech accountable” has reassured the antitrust class about the administration’s commitment on the issue, which the president also underlined in his State of the Union address last month. But Facebook, now rebranded as Meta, clearly has interests before the government, and — now — more former allies to whom they can turn. In 2021 and the first nine months of 2022, only Amazon spent more money on registered federal lobbying (Meta spent $4.6 million on lobbying in the last quarter of 2022). And at a moment when the FTC is suing Facebook and the DOJ’s antitrust division is often out-gunned by industry lawyers, operatives pushing for stronger regulations worry the addition of high-level staffers potentially more sympathetic to the company could matter on the margins. “I don't think anyone is going to tell Jonathan Kanter or Lena Khan to stand down. The momentum already underway will continue. But it’s still very concerning to have a troika of senior West Wing officials… who are not ardently skeptical of Big Tech,” said JEFF HAUSER, the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project. “This could have implications legislatively, with the budget and the Justice Department. Will they care how many people work at the FTC? Will they fight for the DOJ antitrust division to get the funding it needs?” Hauser, who briefly worked as a lobbyist himself, pointed to the company’s intense lobbying of Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO. “If you look at the international trade and tax issues Commerce and Treasury are dealing with, you see how many levers there are for people who are sympathetic to Facebook to tilt the world a little bit more in its direction,” he said. Several congressional members involved in antitrust efforts declined to comment, but some privately expressed concerns about “an optics problem.” The White House dismissed the suggestion it might soften its antitrust stance, pointing to initiatives from Biden’s competition council that have reigned in tech in the absence of legislative action. “Less than a month ago, President Biden stood in front of 28 million Americans and called on Congress to hold big tech accountable for ‘the experiment they are running on our children’,” White House spokesperson ROBYN PATTERSON told West Wing Playbook. “At last year’s State of the Union, he and the first lady led a standing ovation for Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Anyone who doubts this president’s — and his team’s — commitment to reining in tech companies should crawl out from beneath the rock they’ve been living under.” Bipartisan interest in regulating Big Tech is a relatively recent phenomenon, and Republicans and Democrats see some issues differently. But there have been constructive conversations around privacy issues, which could be the focus of a narrower bill in the current Congress, according to people familiar with those conversations. To Facebook skeptics, Terrell’s job overseeing the administration’s legislative affairs shop is the most problematic, given her history lobbying for the company against restrictions and the abundance of Big Tech regulation percolating on the Hill. But some lawmakers behind those proposals — privately and publicly — have expressed more frustration toward Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, whose daughters work for Facebook and Amazon. They note that he did not bring antitrust measures to the floor last year, including during December’s lame duck session. LaBolt was hardly alone among former Obama administration staffers who found work in Silicon Valley – or for its biggest companies in Washington. As Zuckerberg’s spokesman the last several years, LaBolt was repeatedly tasked with publicly defending him on personal matters, including lawsuits over his sprawling Hawaii estate and allegations of misconduct against a close associate. Zients spent two years on Facebook’s board before resigning in May 2020, reportedly over a disagreement with Zuckerberg about the company policies around political discourse and misinformation. Wu, as strong an antitrust voice as there’s been in the administration, tweeted that making him chief of staff was “a great call.” Another former administration official who dismissed questions about the new chief of staff’s ties to the company pointed to how the White House aggressively confronted Facebook during Biden’s first months in office when Zients led the Covid-19 response. “The worst relationship we had with Facebook was probably while Jeff was running the Covid team,” a former administration official said. MESSAGE US — Are you SHERYL SANDBERG, Meta’s former chief operating officer? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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