The Dictatorship
How DOJ approval of a corporate merger has exposed a rift in the MAGA movement
Last month, senior Justice Department officials overruled their subordinates and allowed a major corporate merger to go forward after the companies hired well-connected Trump supporters to lobby the government, sparking allegations of influence peddling.
Some might say that’s just another day in the second Trump administration — but this controversy feels different for a few reasons.
The antitrust settlement, obscure to most people, led to the firing of two senior political appointees within the Justice Department and has deepened a rift among MAGA activists — one of whom publicly blasted the decision as corrupt before taking down her post.
Unlike most allegations of wrongdoing levied against the Trump administration, these seem likely to be independently investigated by a federal judge with the power to put people under oath.
Unlike most allegations of wrongdoing levied against the Trump administration, these seem likely to be independently investigated by a federal judge with the power to put people under oath.
“This is huge deal, and we are only at the beginning,” a former senior DOJ official said.
At issue is a case that looms large in the business world — a fight over a proposed $14 billion merger between computer giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise and rival Juniper Networks, both of which make and sell wireless networking equipment.
Justice Department lawyers first determined the merger was illegal on antitrust grounds because it would stifle competition. Just after Trump took office in January, the DOJ sued to block it. But last month, on the eve of trial, the Justice Department settled the case, allowing the merger to go forward over the opposition of senior antitrust lawyers inside the department, three former DOJ officials familiar with the matter said.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two top political appointees in the antitrust division were fired after an internal power struggle over the deal, and two career lawyers who worked on the case resigned, according to the sources. One of them, Roger Alford, posted his termination notice on LinkedIn.
The two fired lawyers worked for the DOJ’s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, who has been labeled the face of a robust MAGA faction that favors strong enforcement of antitrust laws.
Neither Slater nor any other DOJ antitrust lawyer signed the settlementwhich was instead inked by two senior aides to Attorney General Pam Bondi — Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle and Stanley Woodward, who has been nominated to be associate attorney general. Former DOJ officials say lawyers in the division almost always sign the case filings, and that the lack of their signature if a red flag.
The DOJ’s change of position came after HPE and Juniper acknowledged in court filings that the companies retained Mike Davis, a lawyer and MAGA activist who has advised the Trump administration on judicial nominations and other legal issues. The filings say the companies also hired Will Levi, who served as a senior Justice Department official in the first Trump administration.
People familiar with the matter tell BLN that Arthur Schwartz, a consultant with deep MAGA ties, was also making the case for the merger. Davis declined to comment, and Levi and Schwartz did not respond to requests for comment. Schwartz was not listed in corporate filings, so it’s unclear who was paying him.
MAGA activist Laura Loomer, who has traveled with President Trump, criticized the arrangement in an extraordinary post on X that she later took down.
“Now that @ChadMizelle47 has made it clear that he is open for business at the DOJ to the highest bidder, other consultants are now putting big price tags on their lobby efforts to influence the DOJ to settle even more anti-Trust cases,” Loomer wrote.
“Insider trading? Influence peddling for million dollar contracts? Unregistered MAGA lobbyists? Why is @AGPamBondi, who is supposedly running the DOJ, allowing this kind of grift to take place under the supervision of her boy @ChadMizelle47? Why is she trying to create scandals for the Trump admin?”
Loomer’s comments reflect a faction of the MAGA movement that takes to heart Trump’s promise to drain the Washington swamp —a group deeply suspicious of the tech industry and corporate power in general.
Interestingly, another person who has sometimes espoused those views is Davis, who praised the lawsuit when it was filed in January.
Democratic senators have seized on the case as an example of possible misconduct.
“We are dismayed by allegations that officials in the Antitrust Division may have been sidelined because they opposed the backroom negotiations that led to this settlement,” wrote senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Cory Booker, D-N.J. and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. to Judge P. Casey Pitts of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on July 29.
“Unfortunately, it appears the settlement does not in fact address the concerns DOJ cited as the basis for its January 30 challenge,” the senators noted in their letter, adding that the circumstances of the settlement raise the question of “whether the settlement advances the interests of the public or a well-connected, well-paid group of insiders.”
Requests by Democrats for investigations are a dime a dozen these days, and they have tended to go nowhere. But in this case, the judge presiding over the legal case has extraordinary authority to conduct a probe.
In some past cases, judges have held what amounted to a mini trial in exercising their authority under the Tunney Act.
Under the Tunney Act, a law passed in the wake of a Nixon-era antitrust scandal, Biden-appointed Judge Pitts of the Northern District of California has leeway to thoroughly examine the Justice Department settlement to ensure it’s in the public interest. The judge is allowed to require the production of documents and witness testimony. In some past casesjudges have held what amounted to a mini trial in exercising their authority under the Tunney Act.
The settlement will allow the merger to go forward while requiring HPE to make what industry insiders are calling an unrelated divestment of part of its wireless networking business.
The three former Justice Department officials who are experts in antitrust law — and who declined to be named because they said they feared retaliation — told BLN the settlement did little to resolve concerns internally at DOJ that the merger will harm customers by reducing competition.
If a Tunney Act proceeding goes forward, key figures in Trump world may have to discuss their change of heart under oath. And senior Justice Department officials may have to explain why they adopted his point of view, over the objections of the career experts.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department dismissed another antitrust lawsuit that sought to block a merger between American Express Global Business Travel and CWT Holdings, a case the Antitrust Division filed in mid-January at the end of the Biden administration. But because that lawsuit was dismissed outright instead of settled, the Tunney Act does not apply, and no judge will be able to review what led to the decision.
“I don’t remember that ever happening,” a former DOJ antitrust lawyer said. “The Anti-trust Division has enormous power, and when they bring a case, they usually have the goods.”
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday halted President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive a mail ballot.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, sided with a coalition of nearly two dozen states that challenged the Republican president’s order in granting a summary judgment. Her ruling applies to this year’s midterm election cycle.
Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuitsboth filed in federal court in Boston, that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. The judge agreed, saying in her ruling that the provisions of Trump’s order seeking to create a federal list of eligible voters and using the U.S. Postal Service to determine who can receive a mail ballot are “legally void” because they “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”
It was the second ruling in as many days against executive orders Trump has signed seeking oversight of the nation’s elections. A separate ruling Wednesday prohibited an executive order he had signed last year that would have required people to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote.
Order targeted mail voting, administration likely to appeal
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose state was among the plaintiffs, celebrated the court’s decision.
“Millions of independents, Republicans and Democrats across Arizona have voted by mail for decades,” she said in a statement, noting that nearly 80% of ballots in the state are cast by that method.
Mayes, a Democrat, singled out military families, voters in the state’s rural expanses and Native Americans who cast ballots from tribal lands.
“Donald Trump’s executive order targeted all of these voters,” she said. “But today, the courts affirmed what the Constitution makes clear: States run their elections, not the President.”
AP AUDIO: Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list
AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports President Trump has suffered a legal setback for a second straight day in his bid to get oversight of the nation’s elections.
The White House stood by Trump’s executive order and indicated the administration would appeal the ruling. The order, said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, “lawfully protects our elections, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail in its implementation.”
The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits challenging the order, argued that the motions were premature and that plaintiffs lacked the legal basis to bring their claim based on the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
But in an interim order before Thursday’s ruling, Talwani said the motions pertaining to this year’s election cycle were relevant: “In light of the EO’s specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs,” she wrote. That order denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the challenges.
Executive order sought to give Postal Service a central role in elections
Trump’s executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.
Trump issued his second order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government — through the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration — create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list.
Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.
The Postal Service has published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.
Postal Service workers have pushed back against the order, saying they are not equipped to determine who is eligible to vote in each state. After Trump issued his order last spring, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association said forcing its members into such a role “risks politicizing one of the nation’s most trusted public institutions.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat whose state was among the plaintiffs, said the executive order illustrated how Trump was attempting to “abuse power in previously unthinkable ways” to interfere in elections.
She said it “strains credulity” to think the U.S. Postal Service could set up a workable system for pre-screening individual voters to determine whether they would be allowed to vote by mail, adding that it would be “a shocking violation of American constitutional rights.”
The Postal Service did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.
Trump’s second election executive order faces multiple legal challenges
The lawsuit seeking summary judgment was filed by Democratic attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia. Also signing on were attorneys representing Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, which has a Republican attorney general.
The states also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution. Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, had argued that no one would be prosecuted for violating the order.
The other lawsuit filed in Talwani’s court was by the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups, which have sought a preliminary injunction against the executive order.
In yet another lawsuit filed against the executive order, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in May agreed with the Trump administration that it was too early to block the order because it had yet to be implemented. That lawsuit was brought by Democratic and civil rights groups, which have appealed.
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe BidenTrump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigationsincluding ones run by Republicansfound it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.
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Barrow reported from Atlanta and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas.
California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.
The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.
“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and many traditional allies of the union oppose the measure. They argue it is a temporary fix for an ongoing problem and that it would push the ultrawealthy to leave the state, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run as he prepares to leave office in January, has generally opposed tax increases during his time as governor.
A coalition of healthcare, education and housing groups — including the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association — banded together last week to fight the tax.
“The dangerous wealth tax directly threatens vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects by making California’s revenue even more volatile,” the coalition said in a statement.
Brian Brokaw, a Newsom political adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said it would “make California’s biggest challenges worse.”
“Driving away the state’s sustainable tax base for a one-time grab is bad policy and an even worse deal for 40 million Californians who will be left holding the bag,” he said in a statement.
Under the proposal, the state would spend the money generated from the tax over multiple years. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues would subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Many of the Silicon Valley tech moguls who oppose the measure have already moved their assets to other states or threatened to do so to avoid the possible tax. They have also spent millions to try to defeat it.
Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called Building a Better California that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.
California relies on its top 1% of earnersfor nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.
The union offered to scale back its proposal last week, asking Newsom to back a 2% tax on billionaires instead. But the governor’s office said the lower rate didn’t change his stance.
The proposed tax may have piqued the interest of many Democrats because it comes at a time when they are particularly concerned about affordability, income inequality and federal cutbacks to government programs, said Martin Gilens, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s kind of a perfect storm that sort of bolsters preexisting inclinations to be sympathetic to the idea of raising taxes on the well-to-do,” he said.
But there’s a catch. Support for ballot initiatives often declines as the election nears, and if the measure passes, it’s likely to face legal challenges, Gilens said.
Since taking office one week ago, Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has busied himself on social media posting flattering photos of President Donald Trump, trivia about a former counterintelligence agent and praising his current staff.
What the Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience has not done is address the public about his plans, or calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is being described by top officials as “chaotic” amid firings of senior personnel with threats of more to come.
One image posted to the official X account of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, apparently artificial intelligence-generated, features Trump raising a clenched fist in the air with two B-2 stealth bombers in the sky behind him. Another is an image of the president, his fist clenched, glowering as he stands behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
In another post, Pulte, who was expected to gut the workforce of the National Counterterrorism Center, instead declared the staff there “true professionals and American patriots” after he said he spent time with them, adding “it is a privilege to work beside them.”
And in an apparent attempt at levity, Pulte reposted a message reminding Americans that Tuesday was “National Typewriter Day” and informing them of the role that a former Army counterintelligence agent played.
“Fun CI fact,” the post reads. “Former Army CI Special Agent Leroy Anderson composed ‘The Typewriter’ on October 9, 1950.”
But Pulte’s arrival has sparked anxiety and fear among the office’s workforce, three former U.S. intelligence officials told MS NOW, granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic.
They said that a half dozen political appointees were removed from their posts and several dozen staffers were sent back to their home intelligence agencies. Beyond that, little else is known about Pulte’s plans.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MS NOW that his requests for more information from the office, known by the acronym ODNI, have been rebuffed.
“I’ve been calling over there all day and can’t get my calls returned,” said Himes.
He later said, “I spoke directly to their office of congressional affairs. They said they had nothing for me.”
“It seems like it’s totally chaotic at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on a podcast Wednesday. “There was word that there was going to be firings and then he said he changed his mind. We don’t know.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and now an MS NOW contributor, said that staff in the intelligence community do not know what to think.
“Everyone is in the same boat and unsure of what is going on,” he said. “That said, there is no love lost for the DNI, as many believe that there is redundancy that does need to be cut.”
The other former U.S. intelligence officials said they agree that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of reform. The agency was created after a lack of information sharing among U.S. intelligence agencies played a role in the failure to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ODNI’s mission is to ensure that the country’s now 18 different intelligence agencies share information with one another.
But the former intelligence officials said Pulte is patently unqualified to design or carry out those reforms.
“As with many things Trump alights upon, there is a sliver of truth here but he goes about addressing it in the worst possible way,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW, granted anonymity over concerns of retaliation. “But mass firings without any kind of sense of what you are trying to accomplish is addressing it in the most ham-handed way.”
That former official, as well as Warner and Himes, have said they fear that Pulte’s mission is to use his position as the nation’s top intelligence official to help Trump interfere in the midterm elections in November.
Pulte, who simultaneously serves as the Trump administration’s top federal housing official as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used government mortgage information to file several criminal referrals against Democrats whom Trump considered enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. None of Pulte’s referrals have resulted in criminal convictions.
One fear expressed by Warner and some former intelligence officials is that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates.
One way he could do that, they say, is by falsely claiming foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats. And Pulte and FBI agents could seize voting machines, ballots and election records in November — as Gabbard did in Fulton County, Georgia, last year at Trump’s behest — as part of voter fraud investigations that please the president.
“I have to tell you, I was extraordinarily concerned about the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, interfering in our election,” Warner told NPR earlier this month. “The concerns I had with Tulsi Gabbard now, upon reflection, look small versus the concerns I have with Bill Pulte.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
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