In New Role at Airbnb, Biden Chief of Staff Continues Gaslighting Conservatives

Ron Klain is the eye of the storm. Again. 

Klain, who served as chief of staff to former President Joe Biden, moved to the private sector and now serves as chief legal officer at Airbnb, the real estate rental tech giant. 

Unfortunately, Klain’s gone from managing a White House accused of concealing the severity of a president’s cognitive decline to overseeing a company now being sued over allegations of violating federal securities law.

The gaslighting that ensued throughout the Biden administration is eerily reminiscent of the gaslighting we’re now seeing from Airbnb.

The Heritage Foundation filed suit after Airbnb illegally excluded a shareholder proposal without the required notice or response—a violation of Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Klain’s name is once again tied to a major institution accused of sidestepping legal obligations for political convenience. 

Heritage, an Airbnb shareholder, filed its proposal for the housing rental giant to reject politicized, antisemitic activists’ demands to divest from vendors in locations like Israel. Unfortunately, corporate America—even before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel—started to fall captive to the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. 

This lawsuit comes after a series of efforts in recent years by Heritage and other groups, including education, publicity, and pressure campaigns, to highlight the risks corporations face when ideology overtakes accountability. 

Heritage reports in its filing that it followed all requirements and time stipulations for submitting its shareholder proposal. Fitting with the same type of gaslighting presumably led by Klain—or at least excused and minimized by him—Airbnb claims it never received the shareholder proposal packet. 

This is despite Heritage receiving a FedEx delivery receipt with the signature of an Airbnb employee confirming delivery. Airbnb refuses all knowledge of the proposal and—shockingly—even suggested FedEx forged the signature of its own employee who confirmed delivery.

This type of allegation by Airbnb against FedEx would be Saturday Night Live skit laughable, a schoolboy’s “dog ate my homework” excuse, if it wasn’t part of a serious potential violation of federal regulations. 

“Klain is the chief legal officer for Airbnb, so compliance with federal rules and laws ultimately falls on him,” Trent McCotter, a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC, which represents The Heritage Foundation in the case, said in a statement to Daily Signal. “But because the case is early, we don’t yet know whether he was personally involved on this occasion. We would need discovery from Airbnb to determine that.”

McCotter said the rationale behind the SEC rules is undeniable and clear, with stringent penalties. 

“Companies are supposed to treat shareholder proposals with the utmost respect and urgency, and that is why the SEC has an intricate regulatory scheme for when companies want to exclude a shareholder proposal,” McCotter continued. “That scheme would be dashed if there weren’t consequences for companies that do not follow those regulations and then claim they didn’t actually receive the proposals, despite signed delivery receipts to the contrary.”

A spokesperson for Airbnb responded to The Daily Signal but declined to provide an official comment about Klain or the pending legal case. 

Kudos to Heritage, a David taking on Goliath, for not letting a multibillion-dollar corporation bully them into silence—just like Klain’s team sought to bully millions of conservatives who dared raise questions about whether the occupant of the most powerful office in the world was sufficiently capable of doing his job.

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