Senior Republicans are demanding urgent answers from Google following explosive court allegations that its former Democrat CEO, Eric Schmidt, built a personal 'backdoor' to access users' private data.
The Bombshell Allegations in Court
The claims emerged from a lawsuit filed by Schmidt's former girlfriend and business partner, Michelle Ritter, in a Los Angeles court. In recently unsealed documents, Ritter, 31, alleges that Schmidt, 70, boasted to her about creating an insider access point with a team of Google engineers.
She claims this 'backdoor' enabled him to spy on Google employees and access, snoop on, and alter data for any user of services like Gmail or Google Drive. Ritter further alleges he used this capability against her, manipulating and deleting her emails and documents within her Google Workspace to cover his tracks after she accused him of rape, harassment, and stealing her startup ideas. Schmidt's legal team vehemently denies all these allegations.
Political Fallout and Republican Reaction
The accusations have ignited significant concern among top Republican figures, given Schmidt's deep ties to Democratic politics. Schmidt was a key advisor to Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns and maintained close links to Joe Biden's administration.
This has sparked fears that, if the claims are true, the tech billionaire could have potentially used the alleged backdoor to retrieve political secrets from Republican opponents. "Google owes the public immediate answers," stated Joanna Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
"If a partisan executive could secretly access user accounts, every campaign, election official, and voter deserves to know whether political communications were ever compromised. These allegations confirm Google's leaders were never the neutral referees they claimed to be," Rodriguez added, calling for full transparency and accountability.
Schmidt's Denial and Political History
Schmidt's attorney, Patricia Glaser, dismissed Ritter's filings as "the latest desperate and destructive effort to publish false and defamatory statements" that are contradicted by Ritter's own words. She labelled the claims 'fabricated' and 'pathetic', expressing confidence they would be disproven.
Schmidt's political involvement is well-documented. He was intimately involved in building Obama's 2012 voter-targeting operation and coached the campaign manager. Hillary Clinton's campaign spent over $500,000 with an analytics firm he co-owned, and leaked emails show he sent detailed strategic plans for her 2016 run.
A 2022 Politico investigation found that about 10% of the Biden administration's White House Office of Science and Technology Policy were associates of Schmidt, with his foundation indirectly paying for two staffers' salaries.
This history fuels Republican suspicions. The party has previously sued Google, claiming it biasedly sent GOP emails to spam—a case that was dismissed. In May 2024, senior Republican committee chairs called for a Federal Trade Commission investigation into similar bias allegations.
Google did not respond to a request for comment on the latest claims. The company has previously stated that federal regulators and courts have examined old claims of partisan bias and found nothing substantiated.
