The congressional race in Silicon Valley has gotten ugly

The primary won’t be until early June, but the CA-17 race between five-term incumbent Ro Khanna and tech founder Ethan Agarwal is already getting ugly. Agarwal entered the race in March, backed by a list of prominent tech billionaires largely in response to Khanna’s public support for a proposed ballot measure in California that would impose a one-time 5% tax on residents worth more than $1 billion.

For his part, Agarwal has been going after Khanna by citing primarily his stock trades while in office.

Now newsrooms covering the race are receiving anonymous packages of digitized court documents detailing Agarwal’s legal past. The filing includes a $683,000 personal judgment against him after he stopped making payments on a $2 million copyright settlement with Universal Music Group, which accused his company Aaptiv — an exercise app that combines vocal training with licensed music — of using his recordings without permission; A nearly $2 million landlord lawsuit tied to Aaptiv’s One World Trade Center office, filed in 2023 over a lease Aaptiv walked away from during the coronavirus; And a 2019 federal lawsuit alleges adult content was downloaded from Agarwal’s IP address. The latest lawsuit was filed by Malibu Media (a company that has filed thousands of nearly identical lawsuits against IP addresses across the country and has been widely criticized as a legal shakedown).

The landlord’s case was later dropped; The Malibu Media case was settled without any court finding of liability. The UMG ruling is the most important element of the file. Agarwal personally guaranteed a $2 million settlement before stopping payments three months after the finish line; The two sides later brokered another settlement.

Agarwal himself came forward on at least one story. After the New York Post on Friday ran the headline “Silicon Valley tech candidate sued for downloading too much porn,” Agarwal shared it on social media, writing: “I think transparency and authenticity are important among political candidates. We’re human. We’re not perfect. Yes, it’s embarrassing. But now you know my worst.”

Soon after, investor Chamath Palihapitiya, one of his prominent backers, commented to Agarwal: “The opposition has started researching you because you might win and Rowe is starting to worry.”