Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Michael Bennet of Colorado despatched letters to tech firm CEOs at OpenAI, Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Uber about their or their firms’ million-dollar donations to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund.
In every letter, the senators remind the tech giants that their beneficiant donations come at a suspicious time as their trade has “come under increased scrutiny from federal regulators for antitrust violations, violations of privacy, and harms to workers, consumers, and competition.”
“We are concerned that your company and other Big Tech donors are using your massive contributions to the inaugural fund to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration in an effort to avoid scrutiny, limit regulation, and buy favor,” the letter reads.
A few of these big-money donations come from folks like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose firm reportedly donated not less than $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. However as Warren and Bennet defined within the letter to the Amazon CEO, his firm “is the subject of multiple ongoing regulatory actions, including multiple Federal Trade Commission (FTC) suits related to anticonsumer and anticompetitive practices, a Department of Justice (DOJ).”
Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi donated a mixed $2 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
“The company is the subject of an ongoing FTC investigation for predatory practices,” Warren and Bennet wrote of their letter to him, referring to the latest investigation into the ride-hailing firm’s subscription and cancelation insurance policies.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman donated $1 million to Trump. And the senators’ letter to him particulars how his firm is beneath each an FTC investigation regarding its client practices in addition to one from the Securities and Change Fee regarding its traders.
Google donated $1 million to Trump’s fund, and CEO Sundar Pichai was reminded by Warren and Bennet that the search large “was found by a federal court to have an illegal monopoly over the online search market.” Google has promised to enchantment the ruling, and it is going to be as much as Trump’s Division of Justice to determine whether or not to contest its enchantment.
Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, obtained its $1 million in early—after limiting political information on Fb within the months main as much as the 2024 election. All this clearly appears performed with a purpose to ingratiate Zuckerberg and his firm to Trump. Meta is dealing with a FTC antitrust lawsuit in April.
In keeping with Democracy Now, Trump’s inauguration committee has raised upward of $250 million. To place into perspective, earlier than Trump’s inaugural committee raised greater than $100 million throughout his first go-round, the most important amount of cash ever spent on an inauguration was President Barack Obama, who reportedly raised $50 million. Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer-rights group Public Citizen, experiences that a lot of that cash has been donated by billionaires, such because the tech CEOs whom Warren and Bennet despatched the letters to.
Most of the CEOs who acquired letters from the senators are anticipated to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday, and have been given VIP standing for the day. And it price them solely a drop of their buckets.
