Donald Trump will leave the White House this Wednesday, replaced by Joe Biden, but, as one of his last acts, decided that, despite being controversial, it also forgives, and granted the benefit to dozens of individuals, among them a former engineer of the Google. Anthony Levandowsky was convicted of stealing confidential information from Waymo, Google's self-driving project, to use in his own trucking startup and then selling the company to Uber for US$680 million (more than R$3,4 billion).

Tried and sentenced to 18 months in prison, the Google engineer never set foot in jail due to the Covid-19 pandemic and, now, with the announcement of the presidential pardon, he will never know what life is like behind bars. “My family and I are grateful for the opportunity to move forward and grateful to the president and others who supported and advocated on my behalf,” the former Google engineer posted on his Twitter account.

My family and I are grateful for the opportunity to move forward, and thankful to the President and others who supported and advocated on my behalf.

— Anthony Levandowski (@antlevandowski) January 20, 2021

 

The accusations… And the forgiveness

Judge William Alsup, who sentenced Anthony Levandowski, called the case “the biggest trade secret crime he has ever seen.” The former Google engineer was originally charged with 33 counts of attempted theft of trade secrets. After leaving the Waymo project in 2016 and setting up his own company, he began using Google’s IP for espionage and obtaining confidential information. This led to a legal battle between Google and Uber over the rights to develop self-driving cars, which was only resolved in 2018, with the transportation company paying $245 million (R$1,3 billion) to settle the case.

Trump's pardon of the former Google engineer had the support of big names, such as technology investor Peter Thiel, Amy Craig, Ryan Petersen and Michael Ovitz, among others, as highlighted in the report by Business Insider.

Donald Trump also took advantage of the melancholy end of his term to pardon another nefarious figure, his former advisor Steve Bannon (creator of the right-wing website Breitbart). In addition, rapper Lil Wayne was also among those pardoned by the presidential decree.

Did you think that was not enough? Well, in addition to pardoning former Google engineer Steve Bannon and Lil Wayne, Donald Trump also granted pardons to other very controversial names. Among those pardoned by the presidential pen was Republican Rick Renzi, convicted in 2013 for participating in a bribery scheme in Arizona, Robert Hayes, from North Carolina, who lied to the FBI, and Randall Cunningham, who in 2005 pleaded guilty to accepting US$2,4 million (approximately R$13 million) in bribes from military contractors.

Image: Evan El-Amin (Shutterstock)