In one of his last acts as president, Donald Trump issued dozens of pardons and commutations, including for some notable figures in the worlds of business and finance.
Anthony Levandowski
Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer of self-driving car technology, pleaded guilty in March 2020 to theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google’s self-driving program “with the intent to use it to benefit someone other than Google,” according to a legal filing at the time. He was sentenced in August 2020 to 18 months in prison on one count of stealing trade secrets.
Mr. Levandowski left Google’s self-driving unit, Waymo, in 2016 and helped start a company soon acquired by Uber Technologies Inc. Google parent Alphabet Inc. sued Uber in 2017, claiming that Mr. Levandowski stole thousands of confidential files before leaving Google. Waymo and Uber settled the lawsuit in 2018, but a judge in the case asked federal prosecutors to investigate Uber and Mr. Levandowski over possible trade-secret theft. He was charged by federal authorities with 33 counts of trade-secret theft in August 2019, but a judge ruled that he wouldn’t have to report to prison during the pandemic.
The pardon was supported by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus VR, according to the White House.
—Preetika Rana
