On Wednesday, just before the end of his term, former President Donald Trump pardoned Anthony Lewandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer and self-driving car expert, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in August. 2020 to steal trade secrets from Google.
Lewandowski was a pioneer in self-driving car technology at Google, and he made millions.
To subsequently resign from the company;
To found Auto, a self-driving truck startup, he sold it to the giant Uber in 2016 for $ 680 million.
But a year later, Waymo - Google's self-driving car unit - filed a lawsuit against Uber alleging that Lewandowski had taken thousands of Google files, including secret product designs, with him before leaving.
In the end, the two companies agreed that Uber would pay Waymo nearly $ 250 million in equity for not completing the company's intellectual property rights violation.
In August 2019, however, federal prosecutors indicted Lewandowski with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft.
In March last year, Lewandowski pleaded guilty to a trade secret theft crime, and pleaded guilty to downloading thousands of internal Google documents onto his personal computer.
Lewandowski was also ordered to pay two separate fines, the first amounting to $ 95,000 and the second $ 756,000, as compensation for Google, in addition to his sentence of 18 months in prison, and a judge agreed to stay out of prison until the end of the Coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement on the last day of Trump's presidency, after announcing amnesty for dozens of others, the White House said Lewandowski had paid a heavy price for his actions and plans, devoting his talents to the advancement of the public good.
Lewandowski was dubbed by the White House "an American businessman who led Google's efforts to create self-driving technology."
Among those supporting the amnesty is Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a longtime Trump supporter, who once donated money to a pro-Trump nonprofit linked to the far-right.