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“About three weeks after the San Diego letter was sent, Harris received the first of three donations to her campaign for the U.S. Senate from Heather Podesta, the powerful Washington lobbyist whose ex-husband Tony’s firm, then called the Podesta Group, had worked for Herbalife since 2013.
Heather Podesta’s own lobbying firm, Heather Podesta and Partners, would soon be hired by Herbalife, too.
Harris did not pursue an investigation — even as the Federal Trade Commission proceeded with an investigation of its own — which had been opened the previous March, and which suggested that sufficient grounds for such scrutiny did exist.
The San Diego letter had meticulously laid out those grounds, pointing out that Herbalife presented itself to the public as a lawful enterprise, but that it could nevertheless be “engaged in less obvious conduct” that potentially harmed both Herbalife distributors and Herbalife customers.
Allegations of such conduct, by 2015, had become commonplace in media reports.”