The Justice Department’s top antitrust cop has been ousted amid reports of growing corporate influence over the office and alleged internal divisions over whether to crack down on corporate crimes. The move jeopardizes the future of key antitrust cases against some of the country’s biggest companies, including lawsuits against Live Nation, Visa, and Apple.
Assistant attorney general Gail Slater, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, exited her position last week following reports of tension with Attorney General Pam Bondi over how aggressively to pursue antitrust matters.
Those tensions were evident only ten days into the second Trump administration, when the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Hewlett Packard Enterprise, temporarily blocking the company’s $14 million merger with Juniper Networks, a wireless network competitor. But after a scorched-earth lobbying campaign by Hewlett-Packard, Justice Department lawyers allowed the merger to proceed with limited divestiture requirements, a move Slater reportedly opposed.
Slater’s departure comes several months after the termination of two of her deputies last August. The staffers reportedly clashed with Bondi’s office over the influence of administration-connected lobbyists within the Justice Department. Slater’s preference for direct negotiations — and her resistance to outside consultants — reportedly upset business leaders, prompting complaints to the White House.
After the Hewlett-Packard merger, one of Slater’s fired deputies, Roger Alford, cautioned against “MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists” enabled by the Justice Department to “enrich themselves as long as their friends and supplicants are in power.” As Alford noted, under the Trump administration, “cases are being resolved based on political connections, not the legal merits.”
Live Nation saw its stock value spike in the hours following the news of Slater’s ouster. The company, whose…
Auteur: Veronica Riccobene
