Tag: lawyer

House GOP ignored Capitol Police requests to review public Jan. 6 footage, lawyer says

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The department is typically loath to appear at odds with House leaders in particular, since it relies on the majority party for its budget and are charged with protecting its members.
Last month Republicans started requesting the same footage that the Jan. 6 select committee had access to. Those requests came first from Tim Monahan — who doubles as a top aide to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and as a staff director for the House Administration Committee — and then from Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), the chair of that panel, which has jurisdiction over Capitol security.
Within days, DiBiase indicated, the Capitol Police installed three terminals in a House office building to grant access to the footage. And DiBiase said he also provided four hard drives he had received from the Democratic-led Jan. 6 panel after it completed its work.
“At no time was I nor anyone else from the Capitol Police informed that anyone other than personnel from [the House Administration Committee] would be reviewing the camera footage,” DiBiase indicated.
Later last month, media reports indicated that McCarthy had granted access to the footage to Carlson’s producers. DiBiase said he later learned that “personnel from the Tucker Carlson Show were allowed to view whatever footage they wanted while supervised by staff from [the House Administration Committee] but that no footage had been physically turned over to the show.”
A week later, Monahan requested a list of Capitol Police cameras that were deemed “sensitive” because they include details about evacuation routes or locations such as intelligence committee facilities.
“We worked with the Capitol Police ahead of time to identify any security-sensitive footage and made sure it wasn’t released,” said Mark Bednar, a spokesperson for McCarthy. “In subsequent conversations, the USCP General Counsel confirmed that the department concluded there are no security concerns with what was released.”
A GOP committee aide, asked about the statements in the affidavit, noted that the Republicans asked the Capitol Police for a list of security sensitive cameras “to ensure anything on the list requested by Tucker was approved by USCP, which we did.”

The aide added that Capitol Police “told us they had no concern with what was released,” but didn’t immediately respond to follow up questions about if that comment came before or after the footage aired on Fox, and if it applied to both the clip Capitol Police was able to review and those that they say they weren’t.
DiBiase emphasized that in “numerous conversations” over “several weeks,” he informed Monahan that the Capitol Police wanted “to review every footage clip, whether it was on the Sensitive List or not, if it was going to be made public.” The Jan. 6 select committee had gone through that process with the department “in all cases,” DiBiase said, as had federal prosecutors pursuing cases against hundreds of Capitol riot defendants.
“Of the numerous clips shown during the Tucker Carlson show on March 6 and 7, 2023, I was shown only one clip before it aired, and that clip was from the Sensitive List,” he continued. “Since that clip was substantially similar to a clip used in the Impeachment Trial and was publicly available, I approved the use of the clip. The other approximately 40 clips, which were not from the Sensitive List, were never shown to me nor anyone else from the Capitol Police.”
DiBiase left some key details about his interactions with the House Administration Committee unanswered. For example, he didn’t indicate whether anyone on the panel had agreed to his requests for a preview of the footage.
Notably, DiBiase indicated that the House managers of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack, who used about 15 Capitol security camera clips, did not preview them with the department before using them in the February 2021 proceedings. Those clips included “some from the Sensitive List.” The footnote caught the attention of Republicans who pointed to it on Friday, as an example of when Democrats had provided “zero consultation.”
Bednar also pointed to the impeachment trial footage and said House Republicans had taken more steps to protect security sensitive material than impeachment managers did.
Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger said in a statement earlier this month that he has little control over the footage once it’s provided to lawmakers.
Manger himself fiercely criticized Carlson and Fox News’ handling of the footage, saying it minimized the violence and chaos of Jan. 6 and portrayed Capitol Police officers’ actions in a “misleading” and “offensive” light.
DiBiase’s statement came in the case of William Pope, a Jan. 6 defendant who is representing himself and has moved to publicly release a trove of Jan. 6 security footage. Several other Jan. 6 defendants have cited Carlson’s access to the trove of footage in their own pending matters and said they intend to seek access. But, DiBiase noted in the affidavit, while Administration staff had said last week that no footage had been shown to any defendant or defense counsel, the Capitol Police had received additional requests to review the footage.
McCarthy’s decision to release the footage sparked weeks of questions for House Republicans. It’s also just the beginning of GOP lawmakers’ work to relitigate the attack, with the Administration Committee currently reviewing the previous Jan. 6 select committee’s work and promising to investigate Capitol security decisions leading up to the day. Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are planning a trip to visit the individuals jailed in connection with Jan. 6.
McCarthy has defended his decision to give access to the footage to Carlson, who has falsely portrayed the attack as nonviolent. The speaker and House Administration Committee members have pledged to release the footage more widely.
“I think putting it out all to the American public, you can see the truth, see exactly what transpired that day and everybody can have the exact same” access, McCarthy recently told reporters. “My intention is to release it to everyone.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 17, 2023
Trump invited to testify before NY grand jury, lawyer says

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“It’s just another example of them weaponizing the justice system against him. And it’s sort of unfair,” he said.
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, declined to comment. Such an invitation to testify before a grand jury often indicates a decision on indictments is near.
The invitation to testify was first reported by The New York Times.
Any indictment would come as Trump is ramping up a run to regain the White House in 2024 while simultaneously battling legal problems on multiple fronts.
Trump, in a lengthy statement posted on his social media network, blasted the investigation as a “political Witch-Hunt trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party” and what he called a “corrupt, depraved, and weaponized justice system.”
“I did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said.
Meanwhile, the district attorney in Atlanta, Ga., has said decisions are “imminent” in a two-year investigation into possible illegal meddling in the 2020 election by Trump and his allies. A U.S. Justice Department special counsel is also investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the election as well as the handling of classified documents at his Florida estate.
The New York grand jury has been probing Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment made in 2016 to the porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public about a sexual encounter she said she had with the Republican years earlier.

The money was paid out of the personal funds of Trump’s now-estranged lawyer, Michael Cohen, who then said he was reimbursed by the Trump Organization and also paid extra bonuses for a total that eventually rose to $420,000.
Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 that the payment, and another he helped arrange to the model Karen McDougal through the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid, amounted to an illegal campaign contribution.
Federal prosecutors at the time decided not to bring charges against Trump, who by then was president. The Manhattan district attorneys office then launched its own investigation, which lingered for several years but has been gathering momentum in recent weeks.
Several figures close to Trump have been spotted in recent days entering Bragg’s office for meetings with prosecutors, including his former political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokesperson Hope Hicks.
Cohen has also met several times with prosecutors, saying after a recent visit that he thought the investigation was nearing a conclusion.
Under New York law, people who appear before a grand jury are given immunity from prosecution for things they say during their testimony, so potential targets of criminal investigations are generally invited to testify only if they waive that immunity. Lawyers generally advise clients not to do so if there is a potential for a criminal case.
It isn’t clear what charges prosecutors might be exploring.
Legal experts have said one potential crime could be the way the payments to Cohen were structured and falsely classified internally as being for a legal retainer. New York has a law against falsifying business records, but it is a misdemeanor unless the records fudging is done in conjunction with a more serious felony crime.
Tacopina said there was no crime.
“There’s no precedent for this. There’s no established case law on this campaign finance stuff. It’s ridiculous. And there’s no underlying crime,” he said.
Separately, the district attorney’s office has also spent years investigating whether Trump and his company inflated the value of some its assets in dealings with lenders and potential business partners. Those allegations are the subject of a civil lawsuit, filed by the state’s attorney general.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 10, 2023
Trump 2020 lawyer admits misrepresenting stolen election claims

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Ellis is the latest Trump attorney involved in the former president’s post-election efforts to face discipline. Rudy Giuliani had his license temporarily suspended and is awaiting a final ruling from a bar discipline proceeding in Washington, D.C. John Eastman is preparing for disciplinary proceedings in California. And Jeffrey Clark has temporarily delayed bar discipline proceedings against him in Washington while attempting to bring the fight into federal court.
But Ellis is the first attorney of the group to acknowledge she misrepresented the evidence of fraud. Among her admitted misrepresentations:
— Ellis claimed on Nov. 13, 2020 that Hillary Clinton didn’t concede the 2016 election.
— On Nov 20, 2020, Ellis claimed Trump’s team had evidence of a “coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret.”
— On Nov. 30, 2020, Ellis said on Fox that Trump “won in a landslide.”
— On Dec. 5, 2020, Ellis claimed the Trump team found 500,000 illegal votes had been cast in Arizona.
Both Ellis’ attorney and the disciplinary attorneys bringing the case against her agreed that there was no precedent for the case against Ellis — an effort to aid a sitting president’s bid to undermine confidence in the American election system.
Large noted that Ellis wasn’t Trump’s counsel of record in any lawsuits challenging the election. But he also noted that Ellis admitted her actions violated “her duty of candor to the public.”

“The parties agree that two aggravators apply — [Ellis] had a selfish motive and she engaged in a pattern of misconduct — while one factor, her lack of prior discipline, mitigates her misconduct,” Large determined.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 9, 2023
No allegation of Navlakha committing any act of violence, says lawyer

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Mumbai: There is no allegation against Gautam Navlakha of committing any “act of violence” in the voluminous chargesheet filed in the Elgar Parisha-Maoist links case, the activist’s lawyer told the Bombay High Court on Monday.
While arguing for the activist’s bail, the lawyer also said that there was no prospect of the trial in the case to commence in the near future.
A division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and P D Naik is hearing the arguments on the bail plea, and the same will continue on Tuesday.
Navlakha was arrested in April 2020 after he surrendered before the National Investigation Agency (NIA), and is currently under house arrest pursuant to the Supreme Court’s order.
Appearing for Navlakha, advocate Yug Chaudhary said there was not a single allegation of the activist committing any act of violence, association of violence, abetment of violence, or being part of conspiracy to commit violence in the chargesheet filed by the probe agency.
Hence, no offence under chapter IV (punishment for terrorist activities) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), is made out, he argued.
“The basic ingredient of chapter IV is commission of a terror act, abetment, association or conspiracy. There is nothing against me (accused),” the lawyer submitted.
“There was no description of terrorist acts in the chargesheet No seizure of bombs, arms…there has to be something. It cannot be an imagination,” he said.

Chaudhary, further, claimed that if at all any allegation is made out, it is for offences carrying five to 10 years of imprisonment.
He also pointed out the delay in commencement of trial while arguing for Navlakhha’s bail.
The discharge application was argued months ago, but the prosecution is yet to file its reply. A large number of discharge applications (of other accused) are pending and charges have not been framed yet, the lawyer submitted.
Hence, there is no prospect of the trial to begin soon. Even if the trial begins, it will go on for decades, he added.
Chaudhary further informed the court that till today, they haven’t received the clone copies of the documents seized from the computer of the accused.
The Elgar case relates to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which the police claimed triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial in Pune district.
The police had also claimed that the conclave was backed by Maoists. Later the probe in the case, where more than a dozen activists and academicians have been named as accused, was transferred to the NIA.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 27, 2023
D.C. police lieutenant delivered pre-Jan. 6 tips from Tarrio to Capitol Police, Proud Boy’s lawyer says

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The messages were the latest twist in the trial on charges that Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders conspired to violently prevent the transfer of power from then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden, who won the 2020 election. Tarrio, because of his arrest, was not in Washington during the riot, but he remained in contact with other leaders, who marched on the Capitol and were present at some of the most significant breaches as the mob approached the building.
Prosecutors say the Proud Boys played a leading role in pushing the crowd toward weak points in the Capitol’s defenses and that their own “hand-selected” allies were responsible for breaching police lines — and ultimately the building itself — at multiple points.
The details of Tarrio’s relationship with Lamond had largely remained shrouded in mystery until Wednesday, when prosecutors unveiled dozens of messages between the two.
Over several months, including the crucial weeks before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Lamond appeared to provide Tarrio with inside tips about investigations pertaining to the far-right group.
Lamond, who defense attorneys have lamented is unable to testify in Tarrio’s defense because of the threat of potential prosecution he faces, repeatedly sent messages on encrypted platforms to Tarrio in the weeks before Jan. 6, even tipping off Tarrio to his impending arrest for burning a Black Lives Matter flag at a pro-Trump rally in Washington in December 2020.
Prosecutors emphasized that this wasn’t a typical relationship between an investigator and an informant or cooperating source. Typically, it was Lamond who appeared to volunteer sensitive information about investigations connected to Tarrio, even when Lamond had learned that information from other agencies, like the FBI or Secret Service.
And Tarrio, in turn, shared that information with Proud Boys allies, informing the group on Jan. 4, 2021, that the warrant for his arrest “was just signed.” He would be arrested the next day when he arrived in Washington ahead of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally, which would later morph into a riot that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
“That info stays here,” Tarrio told allies in one private chat.

The relationship between Tarrio and Lamond has been an enigma. Defense attorneys have pointed to it as proof of Tarrio’s close relationship with law enforcement and his willingness to give police departments a heads-up about Proud Boys activities.
During his own testimony to the Jan. 6 select committee, Tarrio alluded to his contacts with the police, indicating that he coordinated his group’s movements in December 2020, during a large pro-Trump rally.
“I coordinated with Metropolitan Police Department to keep my guys away — on these marches, to keep them away from counter-protesters completely,” Tarrio said. “I would say, ‘Hey, I want to march to the monument,’ and they’d tell me, ‘Hey, there’s counter-protesters between where you are and the monument is.’ And I’d be like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to march 4 over there. We’ll march in the opposite direction.’”
But he didn’t specifically identify Lamond. In their own Jan. 6 committee interviews, Donohue and his deputy, Julie Farnam, described coordinating with Lamond — a top intelligence official with the D.C. police — about potential threats. Neither Donohue nor Farnam, referenced getting Proud Boys-related tips or any information derived from Tarrio.
Robert Glover, commander of the Metropolitan Police Department on Jan. 6, told the House select committee that the Proud Boys had had interactions with the department throughout 2020 and “always want to make it look like they’re law enforcement’s friends.” Robert Contee III, chief of the D.C. police, told the committee that Tarrio had been on the department leaders’ radar ahead of Jan. 6, including in a security briefing with Mayor Muriel Bowser a week before the riot.
“I forget the date that the warrant was actually signed for his arrest,” Contee told the committee, describing a Dec. 30, 2020, briefing with the mayor. “But that was kind of lingering out there, MPD world, something that we were following up on.”
The Jan. 6 select committee also indicated that Lamond forwarded other intelligence to the Capitol Police, including a tip from a “civilian” who lives near Washington who warned of stumbling upon a pro-Trump website that featured “detailed plans to storm Federal buildings, dress incognito, and commit crimes against public officials.”
Prosecutors repeatedly suggested Lamond’s contacts with Tarrio appeared to be a one-way street, with Lamond repeatedly providing sensitive nonpublic information to Tarrio, which he’d characterize as a “heads up.” For example, Lamond appeared to give Tarrio advance notice that an arrest warrant for Tarrio was imminent.
The department’s criminal division “had me ID you from a photo you posted on Parler,” Lamond indicated on Dec. 25, 2020. “They may be submitting an arrest warrant to U.S. attorney’s office.”
To emphasize that point, prosecutors elicited testimony from FBI Agent Peter Dubrowski, one of the agents handling the post-Jan. 6 investigation of Proud Boys leaders, describing how unusual it is for law enforcement officials to share investigative information with someone who may be the subject or target of a probe.
“I see no benefit [to law enforcement],” Dubrowski said on the witness stand in response to questions from Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe.
With the jury out of the room, Tarrio’s attorney, Sabino Jauregui, indicated that many of Lamond’s private communications would also show that he made use of information Tarrio provided him to inform superiors — and even other police agencies like the Capitol Police — about the group’s plans and activities.
“We have example after example,” Jauregui said, noting that Lamond would often tell superiors that “my contact” — Tarrio — had informed him about the timing and locations of Proud Boys activities. He said Tarrio even told Lamond about when he would be arriving in D.C. to help facilitate his planned arrest. Some of Tarrio’s information was directed from Lamond to Donohue in the weeks before Jan. 6, Jauregui said.
The trial featured some of the first discussion, with jurors present, of confidential human sources that the FBI relied on to investigate the Proud Boys. Prosecutors suggested that defense counsel had confused the matter by equating those sources — members of the public who voluntarily share information with law enforcement — with undercover FBI agents.
Dubrowski said there were no undercover FBI agents monitoring the chats of the Proud Boys. However, prosecutors emphasized that there were sources within the group who grew alarmed and provided information to law enforcement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 16, 2023
Special counsel seeks to force Trump lawyer to testify, reports say

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It’s unclear what criminality Smith contends Corcoran’s testimony could expose, but previously unsealed court records show that prosecutors convinced a magistrate who issued a search warrant in August for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate that there was evidence of obstruction of justice as well as potential offenses related to classified information.
The search found about 100 documents with classification markings that prosecutors contend should have been returned to the National Archives.
Corcoran did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment.
A Trump spokesperson referred to the special counsel’s investigation as a “targeted, politically motivated witch hunt,” adding: “The weaponized Department of Injustice has shown no regard for common decency and key rules that govern the legal system.”
Under court rules, Smith’s motion to compel Corcoran’s testimony would be heard by the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. Such proceedings are typically held in secret, although rulings sometimes become public.
Howell is set to turn over the chief judge’s post next month to a colleague, James Boasberg, also an Obama appointee.
Attorney General Merrick Garland named Smith as a special counsel in November, assigning him to take over the ongoing investigation into the sensitive documents at Trump’s home, as well as separate probes into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and issues related to fundraising associated with the election and its aftermath.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 15, 2023
Lawyer warns Hunter Biden critics of possible ‘litigation’

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“You have made various statements and engaged in certain activities by your own admission, or that have been publicly reported in the media, concerning our client, Robert Hunter Biden,” Lowell wrote in one such letter obtained by POLITICO. “This letter … constitutes notice that a litigation hold should be in effect for the preservation and retention of all records and documents related to Mr. Biden.”
“It may be necessary to produce this material in litigation,” Lowell added, without elaborating on the type of litigation or the potential defendants.
A spokesperson for Lowell declined to comment on what litigation he was alluding to or to say whether Hunter Biden planned to file a suit in the near future.
An adviser to Giuliani dismissed the letters as an intimidation tactic.
“Instead of gossiping with reporters and leaking this stuff to the press, Abbe Lowell should focus on the facts because the facts don’t support his allegations,” the adviser, Ted Goodman, told POLITICO. “This is yet another failed attempt by Mr. Lowell to silence and intimidate Mayor Giuliani and Mr. Costello. That’s why he made sure to send this letter to you guys.”
Costello, confirming that he had received similar letters for Giuliani, former Trump White House counselor Steve Bannon and himself, said on Wednesday night: “This is just another foolish attempt to intimidate. It will not work.”
The new fusillade of letters is part of a series of increasingly acrimonious exchanges in recent days between the younger Biden’s lawyers and people connected to efforts to publicize details about the alleged contents of the laptop in advance of the 2020 presidential election.
Last week, Lowell sent letters to the Justice Department and Delaware attorney general asking for investigations into various people allegedly connected to handling of the laptop and the data said to have come from it.

Mac Isaac’s lawyer, Brian Della Rocca, did not respond to a message seeking comment on Wednesday but scoffed last week at Hunter Biden’s increasingly combative legal strategy.
“Hunter’s current actions are desperate attempts to continue to blame everyone else for his own actions,” Della Rocca told the New York Post.
The tit-for-tat volleys come as the Justice Department is said to be in the final stages of deciding whether to bring criminal charges against Hunter Biden in connection with alleged tax offenses and his alleged failure to disclose his status as a drug user when applying to buy a handgun in 2018.
Hunter Biden has said he is confident he will not be charged.
Lowell’s latest missives were sent on the same day that Republicans in Congress convened the first of what are expected to be a series of hearings on allegations related to the laptop, as well Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and his alleged efforts to profit from influence over his father.
The first hearing, held by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, focused on efforts by Twitter to suppress on their platform a New York Post article about the alleged contents of the laptop days before the 2020 election. Twitter officials quickly concluded that their initial reaction was a mistake and gradually lifted nearly all the limits they imposed.
POLITICO has not undergone a process to authenticate the alleged contents of the laptop that underpinned the New York Post article, but reporter Ben Schreckinger has confirmed the authenticity of some emails on it.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023
Noida: Lawyer battling depression jumps to death from 15th floor

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Noida: A 27-year-old lawyer battling depression allegedly jumped to her death from her 15th floor apartment in a group housing society here, police officials said on Friday.
The incident took place on Thursday night at the Supertech Capetown under Sector 113 police station limits, an official said.
“The woman worked at a law firm in Noida Sector 63 and lived here with her parents and sister. We reached the spot around 12.30 am after we were alerted about the woman jumping from a high-rise building,” a local police official told PTI.
Citing preliminary findings, the official said the lawyer had been battling depression and was also undergoing medication for it.
The body was sent for postmortem and was later handed over to the family.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 27, 2023
The top Biden lawyer with his sights on Apple and Google

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From nearly the moment Kanter took office in November 2021, he signaled he wanted a different approach. He inherited several cases from his predecessor, and instead of taking the more typical — and less costly — route of settling them, he announced he’d be bringing them to court to block the mergers entirely. (The successful case against Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster was filed before he started.)
In his tougher approach, he had an ally across town: Khan, who was confirmed as FTC chair five months earlier. Though the DOJ and FTC have different remits and tools — the FTC also polices a variety of consumer harms, and the DOJ has the power to bring criminal charges — there is little daylight between Kanter and Khan’s aggressive antitrust strategies, or their sharp focus on the monopoly risk of global tech companies.
Kanter’s tenure is a “huge departure” from his predecessors, said Alex Harman, director of government affairs, antimonopoly and competition policy at the Economic Security Project, the progressive policy group started by Meta co-founder Chris Hughes. “When you bring hard cases you create a deterrent against illegal mergers and antitrust violators,” Harman said.
His tenure started with a string of losses. Since Kanter took over, the government lost challenges to a merger between rival sugar producers, insurance giant United Health Care’s takeover of a key tech company essential to its rivals’ operations and Booz Allen Hamilton’s deal for a competing national security contractor. The DOJ is appealing the sugar and UnitedHealth rulings, though it dropped the Booz Allen case.
The DOJ also lost its first cases challenging collusion in labor markets, and failed to win any convictions in an unprecedented three consecutive trials against a group of chicken-industry executives for price-fixing.
His first big win didn’t come until Halloween when a judge sided with the DOJ in blocking the Penguin deal. It didn’t just block a deal that would have made the world’s largest publisher even bigger, but also validated the department’s novel argument about why the deal should be blocked: Instead of just focusing on harm to consumers, it also focused on the potential harm to writers, who would have fewer options and less competition to publish their books.
Inside the department, the ruling came as a welcome relief, according to multiple people at the antitrust division. In the run-up to the Penguin ruling, there was internal apprehension that if the DOJ lost, there would need to be a serious rethink of the division’s strategy, the people said.
The DOJ has also begun dismantling a decades-old pay system for chicken farmers it says is deceitful, and is dusting off a little-used law to target conflicts of interest among directors on corporate boards. It is also pushing to revive a long-dormant statute criminalizing monopolization, including a recent case against a violent organization with ties to a Mexican drug cartel.

In a recent event, where he was interviewed by Rule, Kanter acknowledged the difficulty of the job, but portrayed his approach as a long game. “I have faith in our judicial system,” he said. “[If] we do our job, which is to articulate the theories of harm that are based on economic realities, that are based on sound legal and expert theories, we’ll see the kind of success we saw in the Penguin case. But that’s a living, breathing process.”
Antitrust cases can be extremely expensive and time-consuming for the government, since they tackle the best-funded companies in the world. The challenge may only grow this year: Though Kanter has yet to bring a major technology case, in addition to the pending Google case POLITICO has reported that a complaint against Apple is also in the works.
Kanter is currently staffing up a litigation team to challenge more mergers and bring more complex cases challenging monopoly power across the economy. The department reportedly has several other major targets in its sights, including pending investigations of Visa, Ticketmaster, the meatpacking industry, and merger reviews involving Adobe and JetBlue.
And those are just things the public is aware of. “So much of the department’s work is like a glacier,” said Kanter’s top deputy, Doha Mekki, at a recent conference in Salt Lake City, when asked when the DOJ will bring more monopolization cases. “I suspect that you’re going to see plenty of activity in that vein, especially as [Kanter] gets past his first year and focuses more on the affirmative enforcement agenda that he’s described to the public.”
To accomplish that, Kanter is intently focused on expanding the division’s expertise beyond the lawyers and economists who have historically filled its ranks. That includes the recent hiring of the division’s first chief technologist, Laura Edelson, with plans to build out a team of experts under her. “We believe that it’s important to have a range of expertise necessary to do the analysis that accompanies an antitrust investigation or enforcement,” Kanter said in the interview, “and so we’re building that out, almost like a business school faculty.”
Kanter has also canvassed long-term staff for ideas, asking the division to revisit case pitches that previous leadership declined to pursue, according to a person familiar with the strategy. Kanter has used such one-on-one meetings with staff to help build support for his vision for the division’s work.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 18, 2023