DOJ ‘Perverted Justice’ in HPE Deal, Dismissed Official Says (1)

A Justice Department official dismissed last month decried the influence of high-paid lobbyists in merger reviews and accused some of his former colleagues of undercutting antitrust enforcement.

Former DOJ attorney Roger Alford, speaking during a conference Monday, said that two of his former colleagues “perverted justice” by accepting an antitrust settlement over Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $13 billion takeover of Juniper Networks Inc.

The department sued to block the transaction in January saying it would harm competition in the market for enterprise wireless equipment used by large companies, universities and hospitals. Alford called on the judge overseeing the case to throw out the proposed settlement and block the transaction.

“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,” Alford said. “I hope the court blocks the HPE/Juniper merger. If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too.”

Under a 1974 law designed to make antitrust settlements more transparent, federal judges must review them and allow public comment before determining whether they are in the public interest.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department who was asked to comment on behalf of the agency, Mizelle and Woodward, said in a statement that Alford’s comments are “the delusional musings of a disgruntled ex,” adding that the resolution of the merger was “based on the merits of the transaction, including national security concerns raised directly to Department leadership by the intelligence community.”

‘Rule of Lobbyists’

In his speech, titled “The Rule of Law Versus the Rule of Lobbyists” — given to a room packed with lobbyists for the tech sector during a conference in Aspen, Colorado — Alford said a group of “MAGA-in-name-only lobbyists and DOJ officials enabling them” are working to try to expand their influence.

Alford said that he was limited in the detail he could offer about his allegations. But he said that he’s hopeful that the Justice Department would make personnel changes because the involvement of lobbyists connected to the administration was undermining legitimate law enforcement.

Mizelle, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, is currently serving as acting associate attorney general. Woodward has been nominated for the associate position and is currently a staff member at the Justice Department.

Before his dismissal, Alford was the top deputy to the department’s antitrust chief Gail Slater. He has since returned to teaching as a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Read More: Top DOJ Antitrust Officials Removed Over HPE-Juniper Settlement

Alford and William Rinner, who led the department’s merger enforcement, were removed in July after a disagreement over how to handle antitrust reviews of pending transactions. That tension came to a head with the HPE deal, which settled over the objections of Slater, Alford and others days before the case was scheduled to go to trial, Bloomberg previously reported.

The lobbyists in the HPE case, according to Alford, included William Levi and Mike Davis. Levi, a partner at Sidley Austin, served as chief of staff to former Attorney General Bill Barr during the first Trump administration. Davis is an influential ally of President Donald Trump and founder of the Article III Project, an advocacy group focused on confirming conservatives to judicial roles. After Trump’s election in November, Davis had backed Slater for the role in the Justice Department.

Davis and Levi declined to comment.

Antitrust Enforcement

Alford said he found it “unnerving” to see the number of companies that had hired connected lobbyists while he was still at the Justice Department. While companies regularly do hire lobbyists to influence Congress, antitrust enforcement has traditionally been handled by lawyers with expertise in the field.

“Under the rule of lobbyists, antitrust laws are nuisances or obstacles to overcome,” Alford said in his speech. “Rather than the legitimate lobbyists who have expertise and perform traditional functions of education and engagement, corrupt lobbyists with no relevant expertise are perverting actual law enforcement through money, power, relationships and influence.”

Alford also said that his concerns were specific to the HPE settlement and not all of the Justice Department’s recent antitrust accords, some of which he said were “good settlements.”

“This is not a systemic problem. This is a personnel problem,” Alford said in response to a question. “We could solve these problems. I wouldn’t be speaking out if I didn’t think that there was a possibility of reform.”

Alford said he had no reason to think that the White House or Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche are involved in his dismissal.

Although HPE closed its purchase of Juniper in July after reaching the settlement agreement with the Justice Department, the process isn’t over until the judge overseeing the case decides whether to accept or reject it.

Disclose Communications

Companies seeking US settlements related to mergers and acquisitions are required to disclose all communications with the executive branch related to their case under the Tunney Act, a 1974 law enacted during the Nixon administration to avoid political influence in such decisions. The act allows a judge to hold an in-depth hearing on a proposed settlement.

Democratic lawmakers have asked Judge P. Casey Pitt in California to order a hearing to review the settlement, though he hasn’t yet said whether he will.

Meanwhile, Davis and Levi are also working on behalf of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment Inc., which is facing a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit over alleged anticompetitive practices.

In his speech, Alford questioned whether the Live Nation case will meet the same result just because they “have paid a bevy of cozy MAGA friends to roam the halls of the Fifth Floor in defense of their monopoly abuses.”

A spokesperson for Live Nation didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Updates with additional details beginning in seventh paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Josh Sisco in San Francisco at jsisco6@bloomberg.net;
Leah Nylen in Washington at lnylen2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

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