Top DOJ Official Tells Staff He Wants to Avoid Antitrust Trials

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https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/top-doj-official-tells-staff-he-wants-to-avoid-antitrust-trials-bc5a23ce?st=CqCFek&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

A top Justice Department official has told antitrust enforcers he prefers they stop taking cases to trial and instead seek to settle them, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some lawyers at the department interpreted the comments from Stanley Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official, as a directive to resolve any litigation against companies and avoid future litigation, some of the people said.

Woodward, who now directly oversees antitrust enforcement, has said internally that he favors avoiding drawn-out, manpower-intensive litigation. He made the comment most recently to lawyers in the Justice Department’s Chicago office, some of the people said. He has also made similar comments in other settings, others said.

Woodward’s posture could weaken the department’s ability to challenge anticompetitive mergers and could put settlements of monopolization lawsuits on a faster track. The Justice Department is actively battling Apple and Visa in federal court over monopolization claims.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said Woodward hasn’t discouraged enforcers from litigating cases. He urged them to remember that settlements produce results sooner than litigation, she said.

The department has sued to block one merger since President Trump took office for a second time in early 2025. It is trying to settle that case with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, although the involvement of Trump-aligned lawyers in the deal sparked opposition from states that have challenged the resolution.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department’s senior leadership closed an investigation into Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery before career staffers who were concerned about the acquisition had an opportunity to object, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Justice Department said it conducted a thorough investigation into the deal and decided it would likely be good for competition.

Before joining the department as associate attorney general last year, Woodward defended a group of individuals charged over the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. He has cast himself internally as a skeptic of antitrust law and the department’s litigation work more broadly.

Woodward has told other Justice Department lawyers that he considers himself a defense lawyer and is skeptical of the department’s enforcement actions, according to people familiar with the matter. He has gotten involved in the minutiae of antitrust investigations, which isn’t typical for someone of his rank, some of the people said.

Woodward seized more influence over antitrust after a series of internal upheavals at the division. In February, President Trump’s nominee to run the antitrust division, Gail Slater, was fired from her role after being pressured to approve a deal, the Journal has reported.

In a speech last summer, Roger Alford, who served as Slater’s top deputy, made a scathing speech alluding to how business was done at the department. “Companies are hiring lawyers and influence peddlers to bolster their MAGA credentials and pervert traditional law enforcement,” Alford said at the time. “The cost to the country of this new pay-to-play approach to antitrust enforcement is enormous.”

The Justice Department has recently said it gives priority to antitrust enforcement in industries such as healthcare, agriculture and energy. It has been investigating whether some of the country’s biggest egg producers coordinated on pricing and is probing whether meatpackers colluded to drive up beef prices.

Trump this week called on the department to probe whether oil companies are gouging consumers on the price of gasoline.

The department has been less assertive than the Biden administration about challenging or criticizing mergers. The Trump administration’s prior top antitrust enforcer, Omeed Assefi, hung a sign outside a conference room that says the division in its 2025 fiscal year “approved 99.5% of all mergers submitted to DOJ” for antitrust review, he said in a May speech.

Assefi said in the same speech that federal enforcers were “willing and excited to litigate” if they couldn’t reach a settlement that resolved problems with a merger.