Top Trump antitrust official leaves post following disputes over big mergers

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NEW YORK (AP) — The top antitrust official in the Trump administration is leaving her post amid tension about greenlighting big mergers in recent months.

Gail Slater, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for antitrust, posted on X Thursday that it was with “great sadness” that she was leaving after just a year in the role. The move comes after back-and-forth decisions about whether to allow Hewlett Packard Enterprises to buy a rival in the telecommunications networking gear business last year.

The Justice Department initially sued to block HPE's $14 billion deal with Juniper Networks because the two would control 70% of the market in the industry, a dominance that “threatens higher prices and less innovation.”

But the suit was eventually settled, and the merger allowed to go through.

Slater's former top deputy has since gone public, warning that antitrust decisions are being made by people in the DOJ who are being influenced by corporate lobbyists and not looking out for the best interests of ordinary Americans.

“Today cases are being resolved based on political connections, not the legal merits,” said Roger Alford in a speech to the Aspen Institute in August shortly after joining Notre Dame Law School as professor.

Slater's role reviewing deals was recently thrown into the spotlight again when President Donald Trump announced he would personally examine Netflix's proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump later backed away from inserting himself into a process normally handled by Justice, promising not to get involved.

Slater, formerly a lawyer at Fox Corporation and Roku, worked as a policy adviser to vice presidential candidate JD Vance in the months before the election.

Her departure comes as the antitrust division is handling several antitrust actions against major companies, including Visa, Google and Live Nation Entertainment, an events company being sued on antitrust grounds for allegedly running an illegal monopoly with its ticket selling business Ticketmaster.

After the Slater post on X this morning, stock in Live Nation rose, closing up 2.5%.

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