Plouffe worked for Uber and Barzun had been rewarded for his fundraising efforts for the US president with the job of US ambassador to the UK. “I hope you and your family are well. I will be in London on the 9th and 10th of December. Any chance you could host the event you kindly suggested with the influencers one of these days? Uber, Trump, Clinton, etc. much to discuss… David.’ Barzun obliged. “What FUN!” the ambassador replied. Few people rejected Plouffe when he asked for a favor. It was just one example of how Uber leveraged Plouffe’s reputation and access to the Obama network to push its agenda across Europe and the Middle East, according to documents in leaked Uber files. Embassy staff organized an event in December around Plouffe giving a speech on the gig economy and invited business minister Anna Soubry, shadow business minister Kevin Brennan, influential MPs, government officials, journalists and business people. Q&A
What are Uber records?
projection The Uber Files is a global investigation based on a trove of 124,000 documents leaked to the Guardian. The data consists of emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the top executives of the Silicon Valley giant, as well as memos, presentations, notebooks, briefing documents and invoices. The leaked records cover 40 countries and span from 2013 to 2017, the period when Uber was aggressively expanding around the world. They reveal how the company broke the law, deceived police and regulators, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments around the world. To facilitate a global public interest investigation, the Guardian shared the data with 180 journalists in 29 countries through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation was managed and led by the Guardian with the ICIJ. In a statement, Uber said: “We have not and will not condone past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values. Instead, we’re asking the public to judge us based on what we’ve done in the last five years and what we’ll do in the years to come.” Thanks for your response. During the trip, Plouffe made the rounds for Uber, going to meet the BBC, London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith and executives of a potential Russian investor in Mayfair, as well as a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank, diaries as the leaked documents show. All standard fare for Plouffe, an A-list political operative who had joined Uber the previous year, bringing with him a to-die-for contact book and the political buzz and clout sought by then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick . Kalanick wanted someone to help Uber take on the “big taxi cartels.” Plouffe, who had led Obama’s successful 2008 campaign for the White House, was ideal. A fighter by trade, Plouffe became one of the central figures in Uber’s global lobbying effort, using his experience to get the company access to leaders, officials and diplomats. Uber also tapped another Obama alumnus as a consultant for policy advice, Jim Messina, who had served as Plouffe’s deputy and initially introduced him to Kalanick. The records suggest that in some cases Uber tried to use him to gain access to public officials. Jim Messina speaking at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in North Carolina. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Alamy
Helping to ‘Move the Needle’
A call here, a meeting there. The well-targeted email to open a door that might otherwise have closed in cities and countries where Uber was struggling. An examination of tens of thousands of leaked internal Uber emails and communications provides rare insight into the company’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering. the then Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, his Spanish counterpart, Mariano Rajoy, and the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, were among those Uber tried to gain access to, sometimes with mixed success. In their different ways, the leaked filings suggest, Plouffe and Messina have promoted and advised Uber in places where it has faced the most resistance, sometimes injecting an aura of legitimacy around a company known for openly flouting regulations and laws. Their work for the company appears to run counter to the spirit of the Obama administration’s pledge to end the misuse of cozy government relations to bolster corporate positions. Records show Plouffe is going from country to country to help Uber in its relentless campaign to open up the transportation sector. He seemed to strongly believe in the work of Uber, which he joined in 2014 as senior vice president of policy and strategy. Plouffe after a roundtable lunch to discuss economic opportunities for New Yorkers in 2015. Photo: Bryan Smith/ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy “When you walk through Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco, the place is buzzing with young, bright and dedicated employees who believe they are part of doing something historic and meaningful,” Plouffe said in a blog post announcing his job . “It’s a feeling I’ve been lucky enough to experience before.” Over the next two years, the filings show, his interventions in some countries appeared to help turn the tide for Uber — Mark MacGann, the company’s chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, described his work in United Arab Emirates, for example, as “awesome.” Plouffe’s visit to the region in 2015 “really helped move the needle” at a time when Uber was “on the brink” of enforcement against UberX in Dubai, according to an email exchange. The leaked files clearly show how Uber enlisted the help of US ambassadors known to both Plouffe and Messina to help mend relations in cities where Uber was struggling. This made perfect sense – often diplomats were big donors to Obama. Dating back to 2014, Uber has seen sitting and former US government officials as key to its expansion plans, according to a leaked memo contained in the files titled “Leveraging the US Government to Support Uber’s International Business ». The email from Plouffe to Barzun in 2015 was an obvious example. There were others. In France, MacGann told Plouffe in 2016 that Uber needed the US ambassador to France, Jane Hartley, to “intervene” in matters related to Uber’s rival Heetch. A former Uber official said the company’s approach to Hartley reflected an effort to provide “information about the business.” When MacGann asked Messina in a leaked text message in July if she had texted Hartley the day before a date, Messina replied: “Tell her I love her” and later: “We gave her FRANCE.” Uber also wanted Plouffe to have a calm chat with Tim Broas, the US ambassador to the Netherlands, after one of the company’s executives raised concerns about a “recent escalation of action against us in NL (including the arrest of senior staff )”. “He probably can’t do much through official channels, but it’s worth letting him know so he can be our champion in private conversations,” Corey Owens, who headed Uber’s global public policy at the time, told an email to MacGann. (Messina also knew Broas, but she languished for him. “If the town of USERS had a mayor, Broas would be it,” she wrote in an April 2015 email.) Plouffe denied in a statement that any of the public officials he sought out while working at Uber were responsive because of his previous relationship with and work for the Obama administration. “Let me tell you, you walk into the room with a transport minister, I don’t care where it is, state capital, city council, European capital, African country, they don’t care what I or anyone else did before. Plouffe said. “I don’t feel like what I was doing previously mattered much in the chambers where you were negotiating laws, which tended to get very specific on a whole range of ride-sharing issues.” The leaked emails also suggest that Plouffe must have been aware of some of Uber’s more questionable tactics. Records show it was included in correspondence that indicated the company was seeking to block investigations or law enforcement against its operations, which had been ruled illegal in some jurisdictions. When Uber’s Paris office was raided by France’s competition and consumer regulator, the Directorate for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), in November 2014, Plouffe was copied on an email chain in which senior executives were discussing cutting access to staff computers. hiding sensitive data, a protocol later known as the “kill switch”. In response to news of the raid, Plouffe wrote: “They refer to [the then French economy minister, Emmanuel] Macron, right?’ In another instance, an email to Plouffe said the use of the kill switch likely prevented authorities from accessing Uber data during a raid. In March 2015, he asked in a message for “real-time updates” about another raid in France. Plouffe did not respond to questions about his apparent knowledge of the use of the kill switch or why it was included in the emails.
Violence as a lever
Obama’s former campaign manager also had some first-hand experience of how taxi drivers have been fed by Uber’s business model. At a breakfast meeting at the Amigo hotel in Brussels in September 2015, Plouffe, the Brussels region’s transport minister, Pascal Smet, and another Uber executive were spotted by taxi drivers. The drivers started pounding on the window. The party had to be chased through a different exit. In another case in Rome, taxi drivers began chasing Plouffe when they discovered he had a meeting with an official, forcing his Uber to reverse on a one-way street.
