On February 19, 2017, a 26-year-old engineer named Susan Fowler published a first-person whistleblowing account detailing systemic sexual harassment, HR cover-ups protecting “high performers,” and aggressive retaliation inside Uber. The post went viral. Three days later, The New York Times published a front-page follow-up corroborating Fowler’s claims with accounts from more than 30 current and former employees, detailing threats of violence and rampant misconduct. Uber subsequently hired former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate, and his report forced the ouster of founder and CEO Travis Kalanick.
Fowler’s post became the catalyst for Silicon Valley’s corporate reckoning over sexual misconduct, breaking the seal of silence eight months before the Harvey Weinstein revelations transformed #MeToo into a global movement. Within a few years, slogans such as #BelieveWomen and #BelieveSurvivors had become cultural and corporate orthodoxy. Institutions were expected to stand with victims rather than reflexively protect powerful men and corporate balance sheets.
Few companies better illustrate how completely that mandate has eroded than Uber, with one of Eric Holder’s former top deputies playing a leading role in its demise.
Earlier this month, The New York Times published an exposé by Emily Steel revealing that female lawyers at high-powered law firms acting on Uber’s behalf routinely rough up assault victims during depositions and courtroom proceedings. These women are suing the ride-sharing giant for allegedly failing to implement basic measures to prevent sexual violence. Even a woman whose assailant pleaded guilty in criminal court to raping her vaginally, anally, and orally while she was unconscious during a ride in Tampa, and who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence, was forced to defend her own conduct rather than simply recount the crime committed against her.
Steel, who was part of the Times team that exposed systemic sexual harassment by powerful men and won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, reported that Uber argued in court filings that the victim, identified as Jane Doe, “conducted herself in a negligent and careless manner” and “contributed to causing her own injuries.” Uber further asserted that Doe’s claims of pain and suffering were “unrelated to the at-issue accident.”
During Doe’s deposition, Uber defense lawyer Taylor Silverberg, senior counsel at the law firm Bowman and Brooke, zeroed in on Doe’s behavior on the night she was raped. Silverberg grilled her about exactly how much Tito’s vodka she had consumed, how many milligrams of Adderall she had taken, and whether she had “felt regret” about mixing the two. She then turned to Doe’s clothing.
“Can you describe the dress?” Silverberg asked. “Were you wearing heels or boots or flats?”
Silverberg also probed Doe’s childhood, asking whether she had felt abandoned by her father or degraded by her mother. She pressed Doe for details about past consensual sexual relationships, asking whether she had previously been sexually abused or had ever had sex in exchange for money.
When Doe’s lawyer moved to end the deposition, Silverberg protested.
“I am not anywhere near done,” Silverberg insisted. “It’s her lawsuit, and I have an obligation to defend my client to the best of my ability.”
Steel reported that more than 4,000 lawsuits have been filed by passengers alleging they were sexually assaulted by drivers dispatched through Uber’s app. (Uber maintains it doesn’t actually employ any drivers.) Most of the cases remain in their early stages. The New York Times reviewed documents from the three cases that reached trial and roughly a dozen others navigating discovery and depositions.
“The litigation has revealed a clear pattern: Uber’s lawyers scour women’s private communications, medical records, therapy notes and other sources for sensitive details, including other sexual assaults, childhood abuse and domestic violence,” Steel reported. “They grill the women about those issues, their sex lives and their behavior on the night of the incident.”
In one case, Uber petitioned a judge to force a woman to turn over details about sexual abuse she experienced as a child by a family member and a family friend. In another, Uber compelled a woman to undergo a psychiatric examination to investigate other sexual assaults she had previously reported. In yet another, a lawyer for Uber asked a woman whether she had been wearing underwear on the night in question and whether she had become “extra sexually active” after the Uber assault.
Since reading Steel’s report, I’ve been waiting for the inevitable media outrage, a reasonable expectation given that not long ago questioning a woman’s account of sexual assault was considered culturally verboten.
The hashtags #BelieveWomen, #BelieveSurvivors, and #BelieveAllWomen were once ubiquitous corporate and cultural anthems. Instead, my ears are burning from a deafening chorus of media crickets. I have yet to find one major legacy publication that has followed the story. Indeed, the primary fallout from the Times investigation came when Uber defense attorney Allison Brown of Kirkland & Ellis informed a federal judge that she and her colleagues were receiving hate mail, violent graphics, and death threats over their representation of the company.
When I began reading Steel’s report, I was so repulsed that I stopped to check who serves as Uber’s chief legal officer, the executive responsible for the company’s legal department and overall litigation strategy. I had a hunch I’d find someone with impeccably polished progressive credentials who had built a public reputation as a champion of women and victims of sexual violence.
My instincts were spot on.
His name is Tony West. Among his chief responsibilities as the third-ranking official in the Obama Justice Department was overseeing the Office on Violence Against Women. West served directly under Eric Holder, the very man Uber later recruited to rehabilitate its shattered corporate reputation.
When questioned by The New York Times about Uber’s courtroom tactics, West did not dispute that the depositions described by Emily Steel had taken place. Instead, he defended the company’s approach.
“I’ve made clear to my legal team that they must always treat survivors with respect, compassion, courtesy and dignity, and that’s exactly what I’ve seen them do,” West told the Times. “Defending the company in a lawsuit and treating survivors with humanity are not mutually exclusive; we must do both.”
Readers can decide for themselves whether women questioned about their clothing, alcohol consumption, childhood trauma, sexual history, and even whether they wore underwear on the night they were assaulted would agree they had been treated with “respect, compassion, courtesy and dignity.”
West is also Kamala Harris’s brother-in-law, married to her sister Maya. While Steel noted the familial connection, the relationship extends well beyond family ties.
In 2024, West took an unpaid leave of absence from Uber to work full time on Harris’s presidential campaign. Operating as a senior surrogate and trusted adviser, he became the principal fundraising bridge between Harris, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street.
When Harris organized her vice-presidential search, an effort overseen by Eric Holder’s firm, Covington & Burling, and former White House counsel Dana Remus, West sat at the center of her inner circle alongside Doug Emhoff, Harris’s spouse, who himself faced allegations that he assaulted a former girlfriend during a trip to France. A spokesperson for Emhoff denied the allegation.
The episode underscored a broader pattern. The political and corporate establishment that once embraced #BelieveWomen as an uncompromising principle proved far more flexible when allegations reached its own inner circle.
Harris is on record saying women who allege they were sexually assaulted should be believed.
“Sexual harassment and assault are real in this country, from movie sets to newsrooms to factory floors. And we need to confront it… A fight on behalf of survivors of sexual assault is not just a fight against predators, but a fight against silence and stigma,” Harris said in an address at a Human Rights Campaign national dinner.
Given West’s background, it is difficult to imagine anyone better suited to oversee Uber’s effort to avoid legal culpability for assaults committed by drivers the company insists it doesn’t employ.
West’s career suggests a remarkably consistent specialty: helping powerful institutions survive accountability crises while minimizing the consequences for the institutions themselves.
West was co-chair of the Obama administration’s much ballyhooed financial crisis mortgage fraud task force and presided over an investigative unit that, months after its public launch, had no office, no phones, no staff, and no executive director. Rather than putting Wall Street executives on the witness stand, West helped orchestrate massive omnibus civil settlements that allowed banks to pay largely tax-deductible penalties out of shareholder funds, avoid admissions of wrongdoing, and treat systemic financial misconduct as a routine cost of doing business.
The Justice Department’s $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America, what Holder called “the largest civil settlement with a single entity in American history,” resolved federal and state claims against the bank and its subsidiaries, including Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. Despite the record dollar amount, critics widely viewed the settlement as little more than a wrist slap given Bank of America’s size and the institution’s central role in the mortgage crisis.
“Banks do not commit crimes; bankers do,” Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets said at the time. “Until those individuals, including executives, are held personally and meaningfully accountable, everyone should expect more crime from Wall Street.”
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, was equally scathing.
“The public wants to know, will anyone go to jail for crashing the economy?” Weissman asked. “Will any executives or Wall Street goliaths be held criminally liable for their misdeeds? Sadly, shamefully, it appears the answer to these questions is no.”
The pattern is difficult to ignore. West’s institutional role has changed. His professional function appears remarkably consistent. Once again, he finds himself representing a powerful institution confronting allegations of systemic misconduct. Once again, the emphasis is on limiting institutional liability rather than expanding institutional accountability.
Wall Street cares not one iota about Uber’s alleged failures to protect passengers or the aggressive legal tactics the company employs to mitigate liability. Investors are instead preoccupied with its depressed stock price because of a perceived threat that Waymo and competing autonomous vehicle platforms pose to Uber’s core business model.
Uber recently announced an authorization to repurchase up to $20 billion of its own stock. The company could settle with its sexual assault victims for a fraction of that capital. Fortunately for Uber and West, socially responsible investing appears to be as dead in the water as the #MeToo movement.