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Google Says Plaintiffs Are Asking For “Irrelevant” Docs In Antitrust Case

 |  February 3, 2022

Google’s lawyers argued in a filing in Manhattan federal court that the plaintiffs have asked for “irrelevant” records outside the scope of court orders in the advertising multidistrict litigation and that the company has already turned over about 850,000 documents, reported Reuters.

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    The filing from Google’s attorneys at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer was a response to assertions on Monday, January 31, in a filing from the plaintiffs’ lawyers accusing Google of “gamesmanship and delay.”

    The plaintiffs contend Google has not provided all the documents that the company, in related litigation, gave to a group of states, including Texas, that sued in 2020 over alleged antitrust violations concerning advertising technology, widely known as “ad tech.”

    A lawyer for the advertiser class, Jordan Elias of San Francisco’s Girard Sharp, told Reuters on Thursday that “there is no burden to Google from giving private plaintiffs access to the documents it previously produced to government enforcers.”

    The plaintiffs’ attorneys said in their filing that court orders “did not permit Google to comb over and reexamine its production to the state of Texas to decide for itself what was and was not ‘related to ad tech.’”

    Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.

    House Votes to Pass CLARITY Act After Drama Threatened to Derail Crypto Market Structure Bill House Votes to Pass CLARITY Act After Drama Threatened to Derail Crypto Market Structure Bill

    House Votes to Pass CLARITY Act After Drama Threatened to Derail Crypto Market Structure Bill

     |  July 17, 2025

    Crypto Week turned into a slog. The U.S. House voted to advance a trio of crypto bills late on Wednesday night but not without drama that nearly derailed the carefully crafted measure. As it was, Republican House leadership had to hold Wednesday’s vote open for nine hours, the longest such delay in history, to hammer out a deal that allowed the package to pass on a party line tally of 217-212.

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      Passage of the procedural measure allowed the House to proceed with final floor votes on the CLARITY Act establishing a broad regulatory structure for digital assets, and the Senate-passed GENIUS Act creating rules for the issuance and trading of stablecoins. The CLARITY Act was approved at press time Thursday afternoon, and a vote on the GENIUS Act was scheduled for later in the day or Friday.

      The drama began Tuesday, when a group of 13 Republicans joined with all the Democrats to block passage of the procedural motion to allow the bills to come to the floor for a final vote. The Republican hardliners were pushing to fold a separate bill banning the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) into the CLARITY Act. After a late-night meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump, the holdouts agreed to drop their demand in exchange for a promise to add language banning CBDCs to the market structure bill.

      That bargain quickly unraveled on Wednesday, however, when the Republican leaders of the Financial Services and Agriculture committees who had shepherded the CLARITY Act to the floor objected to adding the CBDC language. They feared it would undermine the delicate bipartisan support for the market structure act needed to give the bill momentum to get through the Senate. The anti-CBDC bill was a strictly Republican measure introduced by conservatives concerned that a central bank coin would allow the government to monitor private transactions.

      Related: Crypto’s Big Week: House Votes Could Reshape Digital Asset Oversight

      Under the deal finally reached Wednesday night, the House leadership agreed to add the anti-CBDC language to a must-pass defense appropriation bill, which was also approved Wednesday.

      The fate of the CLARITY Act in the Senate remains uncertain, however. Democrats who had supported the bill in committee in the House had begun to back away under pressure from liberal members and party activists angry over Trump and the Trump family’s crypto activity that has yielded them tens of millions in private profit.

      According to the most recent quarterly financial filing with the SEC by World Liberty Financial, which is 40% controlled by the Trumps, the company raised $52.1 million from private sales of its crypto token, likely netting the Trump family millions. Trump’s own annual financial disclosure covering 2024 revealed $600 million in income from crypto, his golf clubs, licensing fees and other private ventures, Reuters reported.

      On Monday, the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions and a key player within Democratic politics, also took the unusual step of weighing in on financial legislation, writing to members of the House warning them not to support the crypto bills.

      “The GENIUS Act, (S. 1582) and the CLARITY Act (HR 3633) pose risks to both retirement funds and to the overall financial stability of the U.S. economy,” the letter said. “Instead of regulating crypto currency, these bills will enable the crypto industry to operate without effective oversight, and this will endanger the financial health of working people.”

      In the end, 56 House Democratics joined Republicans in voting in favor of the CLARITY Act. But the drama, and the opposition from elements of the Democratic base, could chill Democratic support that will be needed to advance the measure in the Senate.