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Donald Trump is considering appointing a lobbyist to lead the Justice Department’s trust group, as Republican officials look into what they say is anti-competitive behavior by Big Tech.
Gail Slater, a senior assistant to vice president-elect JD Vance, is the head of the antitrust group at Trump’s Justice Department, said people familiar with the matter. He was at the beginning of this month He is seen as the leader of the Federal Trade Commission.
Slater’s appointment could signal support for the new administration to take bolder action like those recommended by Biden administration officials — including Jonathan Kanter, head of the DoJ’s antitrust division, and Lina Khan, chairman of the FTC — Wall Street analysts said. .
A strong push for antitrust, especially on Big Tech, has been embraced by a new generation of Make America Great Again leaders led by Vance, who recently he told the Financial Times that they want to see Google broken.
Slater’s appearance as head of the DoJ’s antitrust unit comes amid a battle to protect Trump’s nomination as FTC chairman — and to control how he promotes mergers and acquisitions.
Top contenders include Melissa Holyoak, according to people familiar with the matter. Holyoak, one of the agency’s two Republican commissioners, would favor a more conservative policy that would allow mergers as long as consumers are not harmed — an idea that Khan and Kanter rejected.
But Senator Mike Lee, a Trump ally and the top Republican on the US Senate impeachment committee, has also lost power behind Mark Meador, a former enforcer at the DoJ and the FTC. Wall Street and Big Tech executives fear a continuation of the disloyalty of the Biden administration, which has announced legal challenges against Google, Apple, Meta and Amazon.
“The FTC desperately needs new leadership that will restore the agency to legal and financial compliance and that will continue to hold Big Tech accountable for their anti-competitive behavior,” Lee told the Financial Times in a statement.
“I’m confident that Mark Meador and Melissa Holyoak can lead this agency,” added Lee, who next year will be chairman of the House Energy Committee – a move that will raise his profile in the Republican Party.
Andrew Ferguson, another Republican FTC commissioner, is also in the running to lead the administration. As a current employee, he would not need to be approved by the Senate.
But his former position as senior adviser to Mitch McConnell, the former Republican Senate leader whose relationship with President-elect Trump has soured in recent years, could hurt his chances, a person familiar with the matter said.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition, said that “the remaining presidential elections will continue to be announced by him when they are made”.
Ferguson said in a statement that “Trump’s great success is a revolutionary mandate” and that the “threat to American businesses” of the Biden administration is over. He said that he hopes to “be part of the most innovative, competitive, efficient, and consumer-driven process in the history of this country”.
Holyoak and Meador declined to comment. Slater did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
People familiar with the negotiations said Slater remained in a position to lead projects unrelated to Trump.
“Given the way he views the campaign and his relationship with JD Vance, I think if he wants the DoJ. [division] or the chairman of the FTC, that he is ready to receive it,” said another person.
An Oxford-educated lawyer who worked at the FTC for a decade, Slater was an adviser to Julie Brill, the former FTC Commissioner appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama.
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