Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook board member, is leading the Trump administration's search to fill the government's two top antitrust enforcement jobs, two people familiar with the matter have told BuzzFeed News. While the process is ongoing, the candidate said to be the preferred choice of another tech giant, Google, is unlikely to be picked, the people added.



Thiel, who supported President Trump in the campaign and then joined his transition team, is vetting candidates for chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission and antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, the two officials who enforce the nation’s anti-monopoly laws, according to the people familiar with the matter. On Wednesday, Trump named Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican FTC commissioner, as acting chairwoman, but the search for a permanent chair continues.

One candidate to lead the FTC, Joshua Wright, a former commissioner at the agency, is seen as Google’s favorite for the job. Wright has ties to Google from his earlier work as a law professor, when he received funding from groups backed by Google and co-wrote a paper sympathetic to the search giant. But Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, who supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has struggled to gain traction in Trump’s circle, one person said.

Google, which spent $15.4 million in 2016 lobbying Congress and federal agencies, could now be left in the cold. A leading contender to chair the FTC is Sean Reyes, the Utah attorney general, according to the people. Reyes last year co-wrote a letter to the FTC asking the agency to consider reopening an antitrust case against Google that it had closed without bringing charges.

One challenge for Thiel, according to people familiar with the search, is finding candidates who are Republican and yet willing to diverge from the libertarian position that the government should basically leave companies alone. Trump's campaign rhetoric suggested he would favor candidates who envision an active role for antitrust enforcement, and Thiel's search has reflected that, the people said.

Both Wright and Ohlhausen fit in the traditional conservative mold. At a Heritage Foundation event Tuesday, Ohlhausen was asked by New America Foundation Fellow Matthew Stoller whether President Trump could wield antitrust policies to promote American jobs. “She basically said no,” Stoller told BuzzFeed News.