The DOJ Is Open for Business

How Trump turned antitrust enforcement into a pay-to-play racket for cronies, lobbyists, and even family judgeships.

Donald Trump didn’t just take over the Department of Justice; he appears to have franchised it. What was once the nation’s premier guardian of fair competition is now a storefront for MAGA’s favorite fixers, selling merger approvals like raffle tickets and handing the proceeds to insiders.

Roger Alford is not some outside critic lobbing grenades from the sidelines. Until last month, he was the second-in-command of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, a conservative lawyer who also served during Trump’s first administration. After being fired for resisting political interference in a merger case, he returned to his post as a law professor at Notre Dame.

This week, at the Tech Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum, an influential gathering of antitrust scholars, regulators, and industry insiders, Alford delivered a remarkable speech. He accused Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aides of selling merger clearance to Trumpworld lobbyists and declared that the HPE–Juniper deal was nothing short of a “scandal.”