In one of his final acts as president, Donald Trump early on Wednesday morning pardoned the engineer at the center of an iconic, litigious, and years-long conflict between Uber, Google, and federal prosecutors over the technology for self-driving cars.
Trump issued a pardon for the man at the center of an epic fight between Google and Uber
The full pardon of Anthony Levandowski came out of nowhere.
Encouraged by some of his highest-profile backers in Silicon Valley, such as venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Trump issued the surprise full pardon to Anthony Levandowski, a former Google executive who had decamped to work for Uber. Last year Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google that he then used to help Uber in the self-driving race.
The announcement came as a shock for several reasons: One was that the news that Levandowski was seeking a pardon had not been previously reported. And it was yet another twist in a legal saga that went on for years — in addition to the federal conviction, Google’s self-driving arm, Waymo, at one point sued Uber in a messy legal case before reaching a settlement. Finally, the thinking was, the matter was basically resolved.
The final reason making the news so surprising was the cast of characters the White House said pushed for Levandowski’s full pardon. In addition to Thiel — once Trump’s most prominent backer in Silicon Valley — Levandowski’s supporters in his pardon quest included Palmer Luckey, the founder of the virtual-reality company Oculus and a major Trump campaign donor; Michael Ovitz, the founder of the Hollywood talent giant CAA; and other investors and executives tied to Thiel, including one of his top aides, Blake Masters.
“Mr. Levandowski is an American entrepreneur who led Google’s efforts to create self-driving technology. Mr. Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count arising from civil litigation,” the White House said in its statement. “Notably, his sentencing judge called him a “brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs.” Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.”
