from the corruption-in-the-trump-world,-how-unshocking dept
When I was in DC last week, everyone seemed to be talking about the brewing drama at the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. The HPE/Juniper merger settlement had raised eyebrows, two senior officials had been fired, and rumors were swirling about political interference playing a role in ending what had appeared to be a decently strong antitrust case.
But I don’t think anyone expected one of those fired officials to go full scorched earth quite this quickly—or this thoroughly.
Roger Alford, who served as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s antitrust division before being fired, has now delivered a blistering public account of what he witnessed inside the Trump administration’s Justice Department. Speaking at the TPI Aspen Forum and writing in UnHerd, Alford has essentially confirmed a pay-to-play system that many people expected to arise under Trump, while also destroying any pretense of principled antitrust enforcement (which people like Matt Stoller naively insisted would continue under Trump).
For the few hipster antitrust folks among you, who still harbored credulous hopes that the Trump administration’s “populist” approach to antitrust would continue the more aggressive merger enforcement we saw under Lina Khan, Alford’s account should put that fantasy to rest permanently. What emerges instead is a picture of an administration where hiring the right Trump-connected lobbyists can get you out of even the most solid antitrust case.
The story centers on what should have been a straightforward antitrust case. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) wanted to acquire Juniper Networks for $14 billion, combining the second and third largest companies in the enterprise networking market. The DOJ filed a lawsuit in January to block the merger, alleging it would harm competition and consumers—exactly the kind of horizontal merger challenge that antitrust enforcers have been bringing for decades.
By all accounts, the government had a strong case and was prepared to go to trial. Then, just days before the trial was set to begin, the DOJ abruptly settled on terms that many experts called out as surprisingly weak. Instead of blocking the merger, the settlement required only that HPE divest a small business unit serving certain customers and license some AI technology.
What happened in between? According to reports (and now confirmed by Alford), HPE hired some of Trump’s friends, and suddenly the case got resolved through backroom dealing rather than legal merit.
Alford frames his account as a battle within the Republican party between what he calls “genuine MAGA reformers” (lol) and “MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists.” But come on. There are no “genuine MAGA reformers” anymore. There are just different types of grifters eyeing which angle works best for themselves. Alford’s description makes clear this is really about whether the wealthy and well-connected can simply purchase their way out of antitrust enforcement.
In his UnHerd piece, Alford doesn’t mince words about what he witnessed and makes sure to name names:
The core problem is simple: Attorney General Pam Bondi has delegated authority to figures — such as her chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, and Associate Attorney General-Designee Stanley Woodward — who don’t share her commitment to a single tier of justice for all.
That assumes, of course, that Bondi isn’t also playing politics and loyalty over policy, which she absolutely is.
In his Aspen speech, Alford goes even further, directly accusing senior DOJ officials of corruption:
Although I am limited in what I can say, it is my opinion that in the HPE/Juniper merger scandal Chad Mizelle and Stanley Woodward perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law. I am not given to hyperbole, and I do not say that lightly. As part of the forthcoming Tunney Act proceedings, it would be helpful for the court to clarify the substance and the process by which the settlement was reached. Although the Tunney Act has rarely served its intended purpose, this time the court may demand extensive discovery and examine the surprising truth of what happened. I hope the court blocks the HPE/Juniper merger. If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too. Someday I may have the opportunity to say more.
In case you’re wondering, the Tunney Act (the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act) makes judges evaluate whether a DOJ antitrust consent decree is “in the public interest.” Courts usually rubber-stamp, but they can demand explanations, take public comments, and—rarely—order discovery or reject a decree. If Alford’s right, this is one of those rare cases where the court should actually dig.
These are remarkable accusations from a recently fired government official. “Perverted justice” is not the kind of language former DOJ officials typically use when describing their former colleagues, even when they disagree with policy decisions.
Alford’s account describes in detail how the influence-peddling operation works in practice. Companies facing antitrust scrutiny can now hire politically connected lobbyists to circumvent the normal legal process entirely:
Is this the new normal, with every law firm hiring an influence peddler to dual track and sidestep the litigation and merger review process? That’s what law firms are now considering. The Department of Justice is now overwhelmed with lobbyists with little antitrust expertise going above the Antitrust Division leadership seeking special favors with warm hugs. On numerous occasions in a variety of matters we implored our superiors and the lawyers on the other side to call off the jackals. But to no avail. Today cases are being resolved based on political connections, not the legal merits
He specifically names the fairly well-known “lobbyists” involved in the HPE case:
Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz have made a Faustian bargain of trading on relationships with powerful people to reportedly earn million-dollar success fees by helping corporations undermine Trump’s antitrust agenda, hurt working class Americans, break the rules, and then try to cover it up.
Alford suggests that this move will hurt the reputations of both Davis and Schwartz, but that’s a bit rich, as both have reputations that are well known throughout the political world, and this seems more par for the course than anything else. The only reason to hire either of them is not for their knowledge of antitrust law or how to manage the fallout from an antitrust trial.
The only reason to hire them is for their political connections and shamelessness in conducting dirty tricks.
Davis spent years pushing ridiculous anti-internet/anti-tech policies, and four years ago it was revealed that he had actually sought to get hired by Google, and only became anti-internet when they rejected him. He’s made it quite clear that his views are entirely transactional. He has also talked about how excited he was to put kids in cages (he said it will “be glorious”) and to indict everyone named Biden.
As for Arthur Schwartz, he’s been a “political advisor” to Donald Trump Jr. for years and is close with the Trump family. A recent profile of MAGA lobbyists had retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis refer to Schwartz as “a political hack” and a “shitty political consultant.”
If anything, their reputations were burnished by this, not harmed. They’re political sleazeballs hired to engage in a corrupt plan, and they did exactly that.
Not surprisingly, this creates a system of “for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law” kind of Justice Department:
Others at the DOJ and elsewhere in government consider some parties, counsel, and lobbyists to be on the “same MAGA team” and worthy of special solicitude. They consider others to be “enemies of MAGA” that merit particular disfavor. In my opinion based on regular meetings with him, Chad Mizelle accepts party meetings and makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend. Aware of this injustice, companies are hiring lawyers and influence peddlers to bolster their MAGA credentials and pervert traditional law enforcement.
Alford’s revelations should put the final nail in the coffin to those poor deluded people who bought into the narrative that Trump’s approach to antitrust would somehow be more populist or more aggressive toward corporate power than traditional Republican policies. Instead, what emerges is a system that’s significantly more blatantly corrupt than the usual corporate-friendly approach (which was already somewhat corrupt):
The cost to the country of this new pay-to-play approach to antitrust enforcement is enormous. For thirty pieces of silver, MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists are influencing their allies within the DOJ and risking President Trump’s populist conservative agenda. This goes far beyond traditional lobbying functions. Their goal is to line their own pockets by working for any corporation that will pay top dollar to settle antitrust cases on the cheap. Doing so undermines the rule of law and desperately harms the average American. At risk are President Trump’s antitrust goals of reforming health care, addressing monopoly abuses, promoting deregulation, and helping renters, farmers and blue-collar workers.
And, yes, it’s easy to laugh at Alford for being so naive as to believe that a Trump DOJ would actually do anything along those lines, or actually believing that Trump had “antitrust goals” like those he described. You truly had to not be paying attention to think that’s where things were headed.
But at least it’s nice of him to come out and confirm exactly what plenty of us predicted would happen.
What makes Alford’s account particularly striking is how quickly and completely he’s burned his bridges. Getting fired from a senior government position is one thing—going public immediately afterward with detailed allegations of corruption is quite another. This suggests just how angry Alford is about what he witnessed.
His personal reflection drives home the bitterness:
My position while I served in government was simple: lobbyists and lawyers are subordinate to the law. Yet by stating this truth, I was dismissed for insubordination. My termination letter is now framed and hangs on the wall in my office at Notre Dame. I joke with friends that I’ve never been fired before, and I’ve been working since my first job as a young teenager at the Dairy Queen in Sherman, Texas. All it took to be fired were lobbyists exerting influence on my superiors to retaliate against me for protecting the rule of law against the rule of lobbyists.
This is certainly not the first time that a Trump regime official told all upon being stabbed in the back, but Alford coming out so clearly and directly calling out this blatant corruption is still notable.
Alford’s revelations should end any remaining speculation about whether this administration would continue Lina Khan-style antitrust enforcement. The HPE/Juniper case establishes a clear precedent: hire the right Trump-connected lobbyists, and you can get your merger approved regardless of its competitive impact.
Put money in the pockets of the king’s friends, and the king will make your troubles disappear.
Alford warns that other major cases may face similar interference:
Which case is the next casualty? Will the same senior DOJ officials ignore the President’s Executive Order just because Live Nation and Ticketmaster have paid a bevy of cozy MAGA friends to roam the halls of the Fifth Floor in defense of their monopoly abuses? I wonder what the national security arguments will be in that case.
And, um, yes. The answer is yes. Any major company is going to hire one of these guys, and they’ll laugh all the way to the bank.
There are no principles here. Only transactions.
What Alford describes isn’t just a failure of antitrust policy—it’s the fundamental corruption of the entire justice system that many of us warned we’d see in a second Trump Presidency. Alford’s account portrays justice as for sale to the highest bidder with the right MAGA connections.
Of course, the real irony here is that this is exactly the kind of behavior that Trump and his supporters keep claiming he was elected to get rid of. “Drain the swamp.” Instead, he’s loaded the swamp up with more alligators than ever, and they’re all his friends. The MAGA world isn’t just proving the “every accusation is a confession” line true over and over again, they seem to be proudly using it as a slogan.
This level of corruption is no surprise. The willingness of Alford to be so direct in telling the world about it so quickly after leaving the Justice Department, though, is certainly significant.
Filed Under: antitrust, arthur schwartz, competition, corruption, doj, donald trump, gail slater, lobbying, mike davis, roger alford, rule of law
Companies: hpe, juniper
