Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski among list of last-minute Trump pardons
Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who had been sentenced to 18 months in prison on one count of stealing trade secrets, has received a pardon from President Donald Trump.
The full pardon, which was one of 73 issued late Tuesday evening, means Levandowski will avoid a prison cell. The president also commuted 70 sentences. Levandowski received his sentence in August 2020. However, Judge Alsup, who presided over the case, said he didn’t need to report to prison until the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic had passed.
“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,” Levandowski told TechCrunch.
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In 2011, core members of Google s self-driving car project threatened to leave and launch their own startup.
To get them to stay and to motivate them, Google designed a compensation package that gave them regular salaries, and tied their bonuses to how much value they created.
That setup made most of the team s core members into millionaires, but failed to keep them at Google in the longterm.
Many left to start their own self-driving efforts that now compete with their former employer.