COMING SOON IN MUNICH: POLITICO is joining forces with the Munich Security Conference for the international security forum’s 61st annual meeting. Join our all-star team at MSC beginning Thursday, Feb. 13. Full details here. JUST A TWEAK: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will give up his financial stake in an ongoing lawsuit over the HPV vaccine Gardasil if confirmed” as HHS secretary, our Lauren Gardner and Adam Cancryn report. The about-face, revealed in Kennedy’s written responses to questions from the Senate Finance Committee, followed pressure from Democratic senators. — Kennedy told the lawmakers he was amending his ethics pledge and planned to “divest my interest in this litigation,” which would have given Kennedy 10 percent of any fees awarded in a lawsuit over the vaccine as part of an arrangement with the law firm Wisner Baum. Now, any proceeds will be steered to one of Kennedy’s sons, he said. — “The arrangement is still likely to face scrutiny from ethics experts, and the forthcoming amendments didn’t appease Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who first pressed Kennedy on his financial ties to pharma litigation on Wednesday — a Finance Committee exchange in which he refused to commit to forgoing his stake in litigation against the drug company Merck.” UBER REVAMPS LOBBYING LINEUP: Uber has given its lobbying lineup a refresh for the new political landscape. Uber retained Jeffries Strategies’ Stewart Jeffries in December to work on a whole slew of issues including the gig economy and worker classification, data privacy, competition, artificial intelligence and car insurance and related litigation, according to a disclosure filed this week. — It’s the fourth new firm Uber has added since November, when the company started bringing on its first new outside lobbying firms in more than three years: Miller Strategies, TheGROUP D.C. and Forbes Tate. At the same time, Uber parted ways with Tremont Strategies Group, Alexis Tkachuk and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in the final months of 2024. — Uber also named a new head of federal affairs this month, bringing longtime state and local lobbyist Javier Correoso — a Rubio alum — up to D.C. to lead the company’s engagement with Congress and the administration, where reducing car insurance rates and the expansion of autonomous vehicles will be among their top priorities. (On the latter issue, Uber is set to face new competition in the self-driving-rideshare sector, with Trump pal Elon Musk announcing this week that Tesla will roll out its own robotaxi offering.) — Amid the lobbying reshuffle, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee on top of another $1 million from the company itself. Khosrowshahi was among the tech executives who flocked to the nation’s capital for Trump’s swearing-in and told the Wall Street Journal last week that he is eager to engage with the new administration. WHO BANKROLLED THE INAUGURATION, CONT.: “Cryptocurrency platforms Coinbase and Kraken, crypto investment firm Paradigm Operations, blockchain company Galaxy Digital Holdings and the trading platforms Robinhood Markets and Crypto.com have all officially joined Donald Trump’s seven-figure inauguration donor club, alongside Meta, Amazon, Uber and a host of other corporate titans,” Dave Levinthal reports for NOTUS. — Robinhood gave $2 million, while Coinbase, Paradigm, Kraken, Crypto.com and Galaxy Digital Holdings all gave $1 million, according to disclosures filed this week. Other newly revealed members of the million-dollar-club included Altria, Verizon, Bayer, the National Association of Manufacturers, Goldman Sachs and Coupang while other donors included Q Cells ($500,000), Instacart ($100,000), the American Clean Power Association ($100,000) and Abbott Labs ($500,000). MUSK READ: “Several top Republican lawyers are joining forces with the lawyer for the billionaire Elon Musk in hopes of building a new conservative legal powerhouse,” The New York Times’ Teddy Schleifer reports. — “Chris Gober, a swaggering Texas-based lawyer who has represented Mr. Musk in high-profile political fights for the last year,” has poached four lawyers from the GOP political law firm Holtzman Vogel — Jessica Furst Johnson, Steve Roberts, Christine Fort and Nicole Kelly — in what Gober argued was the “biggest political coup in the political law world that anybody has seen to date.” — “The move is yet another sign of the expanding influence of Mr. Musk in big-money Republican politics. Mr. Musk is the Republican Party’s top donor and has become one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers. That rise has empowered those in Mr. Musk’s orbit, as well.” PARDON ME: Trump is weighing a pardon for Pras Michel, the former Fugees rapper facing 22 years behind bars for corruption charges including acting as an unregistered foreign agent, The Hollywood Reporter’s Gary Baum writes. — Michel was convicted in 2023 “for his part in a multibillion-dollar, globe-spanning scandal that the FBI deemed the ‘largest kleptocracy case to date.’ The saga has brought down the Malaysian prime minister, a top Goldman Sachs banker and a key first-term Trump fundraiser. It’s also ensnared other high-profile Hollywood players, including Leonardo DiCaprio, who’d become close to the saga’s alleged criminal mastermind.” — Michel’s publicist Erica Dumas told the site that his legal team “‘is exploring all available options following his case.’ … Michel has recently pursued his appeal process in part by arguing the incompetence of his trial attorney, who garnered headlines for bungling closing arguments through misuse of an artificial intelligence program.” — The lawyer reportedly handling the rapper’s clemency push “is Adam Katz, who has represented Rudy Giuliani in litigation arising from the former New York City mayor turned Trump consigliere’s own legal effort to thwart the 2020 presidential election.”
| 
