Top Trump antitrust official leaves post following disputes over big mergers

FILE - An FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the field office in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File) · Associated Press Finance

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Fri, February 13, 2026 at 5:38 AM GMT+9 1 min read

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NEW YORK (AP) — The top antitrust official in the Trump administration is leaving her post amid tension about greenlighting big mergers in recent months.

Gail Slater, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for antitrust, posted on X Thursday that it was with “great sadness” that she was leaving after just a year in the role. The move comes after a back-and-forth decisions about whether to allow Hewlett Packard Enterprises to buy a rival in the telecommunications networking gear business last year.

The Justice Department initially tried to block the $14 billion deal with Juniper Networks, arguing in a lawsuit the two would control 70% of the market in the industry, a dominance that “threatens higher prices and less innovation.” But the suit was soon settled, and the merger allowed to go through.

Slater’s role reviewing deals was thrown into the spotlight again recently when President Donald Trump announced he would personally examine Netflix’s proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump later backed away from inserting himself into a process normally handled by Justice, promising not to get involved.

Slater, formerly a lawyer at Fox Corporation and Roku, worked as a policy adviser to vice presidential candidate JD Vance in the months before the election.

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