How hubris, revenge and a breakup brought down Big Tech’s proudest ally

livemint.com:

For a time, Joshua Wright juggled a wife, three children, three mistresses and a well-paid career as a law professor and antitrust consultant for Google, Qualcomm and Facebook. He might have been able to keep it going. But in October 2021, Wright ended a yearslong affair with Elyse Dorsey, and everything started to tumble.

He dumped Dorsey in a text, saying he was back with a former lover. “I’m so embarrassed for thinking you ever respected me," she told him. Dorsey, a former antitrust lawyer for the Justice Department, knew secrets that Wright had kept from his wife, employers and corporate clients.

By last summer, everybody knew. Since at least 2006, Wright had extramarital affairs with students who took his classes at George Mason University’s law school, a public institution in Arlington, Va. Some of the women said they met his sexual demands out of fear he might sink their careers if they refused, according to court records.

During much of that time, Wright was the leading defender of Google, Qualcomm and other corporate giants against antitrust probes by federal regulators. While Wright was little-known outside of Washington, he built a multimillion-dollar career persuading antitrust regulators to leave his clients alone. While serving as a regulator himself on the Federal Trade Commission, Wright won a vote to limit the agency’s antitrust powers.

The sexual-misconduct allegations later cost Wright a consulting business that brought in more than $2 million a year and a university job that paid more than $440,000 a year. Google, Amazon and Facebook lost an invaluable asset. It all started to unravel with Wright’s breakup text message.