Trump's Antitrust Nominee, Rife With Conflicts, Puts Democrats To The Test | HuffPost Latest News - Action News
Home WebMail Tuesday, November 5, 2024, 12:53 AM | Calgary | 1.1°C | Regions Advertise Login | Our platform is in maintenance mode. Some URLs may not be available. |
Posted: 2017-08-25T09:46:43Z | Updated: 2017-08-25T20:01:22Z

President Donald Trump s nominee to lead the Department of Justices antitrust division promised in April to step aside on issues involving Anthems failed merger with Cigna a case in which he had fought the federal government on behalf of the health insurance giants and lost in order to avoid a conflict of interest.

But thats far from the only conflict Makan Delrahim, 47, a former corporate lawyer and lobbyist, is likely to face if confirmed. His full Senate vote has yet to be scheduled but could come as early as next month. He seems likely to be approved after only one Democrat voted against advancing his nomination in June. Yet he would become the nations top trustbuster at a time when corporate power is more concentrated than it has been in nearly a century and monopolies are again becoming lightning rods for populist politics.

As a partner at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck law firm for 12 years, he lobbied for Google in its successful acquisition of the online advertising firm DoubleClick, helping to transform the tech giant into one-half of the duopoly sucking up 98 percent of every new ad dollar spent last year. He represented T-Mobile in its merger with MetroPCS, which was completed in 2013. He lobbied for Comcast as it sought to buy NBCUniversal, a deal panned by one critic as the shining example of how you dont approve a merger with conditions.

His other corporate clients included AT&T, Johnson & Johnson , Microsoft , Merck , Oracle , Qualcomm , Pfizer and Neiman Marcus all of which are facing or have recently settled antitrust litigation.

Delrahim stopped working for many of those companies years ago. He ended his relationship with AT&T which is currently seeking regulatory approval to purchase Time Warner in 2008, as Recode reported. He terminated his lobbying registration with Comcast in 2010, the year before the Justice Department approved its acquisition of NBCUniversal. He curtailed lobbying for Qualcomm at the end of 2016, shortly before joining Trumps transition team as a deputy legal counsel.

Now Comcast is rumored to be considering buying a wireless network one analyst floated Verizon (which owns HuffPosts parent company, Oath) as a potential takeover target. And AT&Ts plan to buy Time Warner, putting a media powerhouse in the hands of a telecom giant, echoes the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger, the last big deal to give one company control over the pipes and what flows through them.

We dont want to see deals like that specifically in the telecom sector again, Joshua Stager, policy counsel at the New America think tanks Open Technology Institute, told HuffPost. We would hope thered be a recusal on anything related to Comcast.

That remains to be seen, but Delrahims views on the AT&T deal are clearer. In January, he said he hadnt seen any of the facts . But last October, he said he didnt take issue with the merger because AT&T does not directly compete with Time Warner.