Before her appointment as Washington’s top antitrust enforcer, Gail Slater told lawmakers concerned that Donald Trump could hijack her division that she would “work to guard against any improper influences”.
Less than a year later, the White House has pushed Slater out of the Department of Justice after she faced pressure from US Attorney General Pam Bondi and allies over her handling of antitrust investigations.
Her exit last week has rattled the antitrust unit after a long-running tug of war between two Maga factions — populists led by vice-president JD Vance, who backed Slater and sought a tough competition policy, and a more business-friendly wing that has acquiesced to companies’ lobbying efforts.
Slater’s departure suggests the populists are floundering. It could also cement, critics say, a new antitrust regime shaped by political interests at a time when the DoJ, under the leadership of Trump loyalist Bondi, is accused of bending to the president’s wishes — claims the department rejects.
Critics, including some Republicans, condemn the DoJ for indictments against Trump’s perceived opponents, its handling of files linked to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and its response to the conduct of federal enforcement agents in Minnesota, who shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Pam Bondi during a judiciary committee hearing in Washington last week © Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg
Slater’s exit reinforces a pivot away from the antitrust crackdown unleashed during Joe Biden’s presidency. It comes as lobbyists push back against one of the most high-profile monopoly cases filed by Biden’s DoJ, against Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment, and follows a fraught settlement that allowed a tech deal to go ahead.
“The welcoming of political intervention and the role of the lobbyist means that the traditional methods of technical analysis count for less in the decision to prosecute,” said William Kovacic, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
“There’s no tolerance for debate,” he added. “Is this part of a larger custom now within the administration to suppress dissent [and] say: ‘once we have made the political decision, we don’t want any back talk about consequences’? That’s a horrible change in direction for how governments operate.”
Claims that there is no tolerance for debate are “completely false”, said a DoJ official. “What is welcome is co-operation and co-ordination within the department, and that includes healthy debate of facts and evidence.”
“There are hundreds of deals before the division, and the goal is to assess these with more urgency and speed, so that we can protect against any consumer harms, while bringing affordability and economic growth as soon as possible to the American people,” the DoJ official added.
Slater was appointed in March with strong bipartisan backing. But her relationship with top DoJ political appointees deteriorated as they clashed over staffing decisions, public messaging and case strategy.
Her former role as a top aide to Vance, who has called for the break-up of Google, initially stood her in good stead. But her closest political ally has offered her no public defence in recent days and his office did not respond to a request for comment on Slater’s departure.
Gail Slater and Todd Blanche, left, outside the federal court in Washington in 2025 © Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg
Other supporters publicly turned against her, including Trump ally Mike Davis, who hailed Slater’s appointment only to mark her exit with a wave of attacks. “I’m sorry and embarrassed I recommended her . . . Adios,” the conservative lawyer wrote in a post on X on Friday.
“She went out of her way to knife too many Trump admin colleagues.” He added on Thursday: “Good riddance.”
Slater told the FT in a statement: “I am proud of the work done by the Antitrust Division this past year: from taking on Big Tech to tackling President Trump’s affordability agenda in cases impacting rental markets, electricity, and key commodities such as beef and eggs.
“To the online trolls out there, of which there are very few, I wish them well. As the good book says, ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’.”
A former senior counsel to Chuck Grassley, Republican chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Davis has become a sought-after adviser for businesses lobbying the Trump administration against antitrust enforcement.
Davis has advised Live Nation in talks with DoJ officials in an attempt to avoid trial, according to people familiar with the matter.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager, has also advised Live Nation and met deputy attorney-general Todd Blanche, Slater and their respective teams, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Biden’s enforcers in 2024 filed a lawsuit accusing the Ticketmaster parent of operating a monopoly that “suffocates its competition” and seeking the company’s break-up. Live Nation has sought to have the case dismissed, arguing it was based on false premises and that there was no harm to consumers in markets it was accused of monopolising.
The settlement negotiations were a “major factor” in Slater’s departure, according to a former DoJ antitrust official.
Davis and Conway declined to comment. Live Nation did not respond to a request for comment.
While Slater adopted a laxer approach than Biden’s DoJ to merger reviews and reached a string of settlements, the department has stood by blockbuster monopoly cases brought in recent years against companies including Google, Apple and Visa.
Abandoning the Live Nation challenge would mark the first rebuke to the revival of monopoly enforcement that began under Trump’s first administration and accelerated under Biden.
The case is “extraordinarily politically and substantively popular”, said a former senior DoJ official.
“It has massive support from state attorneys-general,” the official added. “If [the DoJ is] willing to settle that on the cheap, then it suggests that they’ve completely abandoned” the Maga populists’ commitment to aggressive antitrust enforcement. “That’s going to be the ultimate test.”
But others argue that this commitment was long gone.
Continuing cases against Google or Apple “is not a continuation of monopoly enforcement”, said a senior antitrust lawyer. “It’s a continuation of using antitrust to attack companies that they don’t particularly like.”
Maga Republicans consider antitrust a tool to challenge Big Tech over claims they have censored conservatives on their platforms.
The Trump administration “is not pro-enforcement universally”, the lawyer added. “They’re pro-enforcement when they want to discipline companies they don’t like.”
Davis also lobbied on behalf of the proposed $14bn acquisition of Juniper Networks by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which the DoJ sued to block in January 2025 only to reach a settlement five months later that allowed the deal to continue.
Slater’s opposition to the settlement heightened internal tensions. The deal intensified fears in the antitrust unit that enforcement decisions were being driven by broader political considerations, according to people briefed on the matter.
The justice department later fired two of the antitrust division’s top enforcers amid disagreements. One of those, Roger Alford, formerly Slater’s second-in-command, has alleged that aides to Bondi were influenced by lobbyists before negotiating the Juniper settlement.
“The department has consistently reiterated that resolution of this merger was based only on the merits of the transaction,” the DoJ said in a statement on Thursday.
Omeed Assefi, a senior official in the antitrust division, has been appointed acting chief — a role he took on before Slater’s Senate confirmation, when the unit challenged the HPE-Juniper deal.
But some experts argue that, in the face of her exit, it could be hard for the unit to assert itself against the White House and senior DoJ officials.
There will be a “much more transactional-based antitrust review”, said the senior lawyer. “Politics will matter in any particular deal or industry. If you’re in good stead with the administration, your transaction has a greater likelihood of clearing than if you’re not.”
This risks injecting a fresh dose of instability as Wall Street and corporate America seek to navigate antitrust scrutiny in Washington.
“Trying to find consistency and predictability in [Maga policy] is pretty difficult,” said the former senior DoJ official.
“A lot of their ideology that tends to be anti-corporate is more performative than it is substantive.”