A US Justice Department deputy who was fired last month over the review of a large tech merger said lobbyists are polluting antitrust enforcement.
Roger Alford’s comments draw the starkest battle lines yet between competing factions inside the Trump administration, pitting a populist mistrust of corporate consolidation against a dealmaking impulse toward light regulation.
“I am talking about the battle between genuine MAGA reformers and MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists,” Alford, a two-time Trump appointee, said in a speech at the Technology Policy Institute in Aspen, Colo. “It’s a fight over whether Americans will have equal justice under law, or whether preferential access to our justice system is for sale to the wealthy and well-connected.” (The full text is here and worth reading).
Alford was dismissed after he objected to HPE’s use of lobbyists close to Trump to push through its $14 billion takeover of Juniper Networks, Semafor and others have reported. In his remarks Monday, he urged a federal court to examine whether influence-peddling pushed through the deal, which closed last month. “If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too.”
“Roger Alford is the James Comey of antitrust — pursuing blind self-promotion and ego, while ignoring reality,” a DOJ spokesman said.