Anti-Monopoly

The ethics officer who recommended Lina Khan recuse herself from the Meta/Within case owns between $15k and $50k in Meta stock.

The Revolving Door Project sent a letter to Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who is presiding over the FTC’s challenge of the Microsoft/Activision merger, after Judge Corley disclosed that her son is an employee of Microsoft but did not recuse. This relationship may violate the Code of Conduct for US Judges.

Implicit in the worldview of these revolvers is the idea that corporations should be free to operate and acquire competitors with near impunity, therefore antitrust enforcement should be as narrowly tailored as possible. This is obviously problematic — we need regulators that believe in the government’s ability to take on corporations with outsized market influence — but Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney recently took things many steps further in her representation of the biotech company Illumina in its case against the FTC. Varney doesn’t just attack specific enforcement actions as unwarranted, but calls into question the constitutionality of the FTC’s authority to issue enforcement actions in the first place. 

Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney, a former head of the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, and other BigLaw lawyers representing Illumina and Grail filed a brief this week seeking to secure a merger which the FTC said would “diminish innovation in the U.S. market” for cancer detection tests. Revolving Door Project Research Director Andrea Beaty released the following statement concerning the brief and its authors.

With executive branch agencies under renewed attack as President Biden negotiates with the GOP, we revisit our research on government capacity.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and DOJ Antitrust Division have long served as an essential stop for antitrust experts looking to maximize opportunities, influence, and compensation at BigLaw firms and monopolistic corporations. By spending some time learning the ins and outs of government investigations and enforcement efforts, revolvers are seen by potential corporate employers to be better equipped to assist corporations in antitrust lawsuits against their former government employers.

Today marks Christine Wilson’s final day as a Commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission. The question on the top of our minds: Will Wilson follow in the footsteps of her former colleague, and RDP’s 2022 “Revolver of the Year,” Noah Phillips, and move to a cushy BigLaw job defending corporations from antitrust enforcement? 

This is the latest installment of a new biweekly blog series from RDP. Every two weeks, we call out ongoing trends in media coverage of the Justice Department’s focus and priorities, giving context from our past DOJ oversight work as needed, with an eye to the impact of DOJ capacity and resources, as well as alignment with the Biden administration’s professed goals.

Christine Wilson leaving the FTC is good news for anyone who cares about effective antitrust enforcement. A quintessential revolving door figure, Wilson’s tenure was only useful to her job prospects once she decided it was time to leave the FTC.

This is the latest installment of a new biweekly blog series from RDP. Every two weeks, we call out ongoing trends in media coverage of the Justice Department’s focus and priorities, giving context from our past DOJ oversight work as needed, with an eye to the impact of DOJ capacity and resources, as well as alignment with the Biden administration’s professed goals.

Attacks on aggressive antitrust enforcement from ‘fellow Democrats’ who work for monopolists should be seen for what they are.

Congressional Democrats managed to pass a few crucial measures during December’s lame duck session. One tiny fraction of the omnibus bill to fund the government was the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, a measure for which anti-monopoly advocates have long been pushing. And beyond the DOJ Antitrust and FTC’s edict to enforce competition, the FTC has another underfunded but crucial mission: consumer protection. 

Drabinsky doesn’t face any unfair barrier to entry. He faces consequences for reneging on his own contracts and creating a hostile work environment.

Early into his administration, President Biden signed his Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, a key first move to rein in Big Tech and other corporate monopolies. But the White House and executive branch agencies cannot act alone to return economic power to consumers and small businesses. Congress must also act.