US: AAG says tweets “don’t affect our decisions”

On Tuesday, November 13, Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division chief Makan Delrahim spoke on CNBC and, among other comments, responded to questions regarding President Trump’s tweets attacking Comcast and Amazon accusing the companies of antitrust violations. The most recent tweet came on Monday, November 12, supporting the American Cable Association’s letter to the DOJ requesting an investigation into Comcast’s alleged antitrust violations.

“… these types of concerns raised about Amazon are bipartisan. And Senators raise them, the president has raised it. It’s—again, I think it’s great that we have such a debate about free markets and the antitrust laws there to protect the free markets. As far as what we do in our enforcement, you know, we need the evidence, we need the economics, we go to court. And politics, you know, that goes on between various aspects of the government don’t affect our decisions to make these cases,” Delrahim said.

Additionally, when asked about the DOJ returning to court to try to stop the Time Warner AT&T merger, Delrahim responded, “The Court of Appeals in D.C. will be hearing the oral arguments December 6th. The parties, we had agreed with them to hold the Turner assets separate until the end of February and so they’re supposed to be running that business a little bit separately so that in the event the court of appeals overturns the district court’s decision as we argued—and I think they should… there’s been a lot of support for our appeal. You know, you had those—the 29 or so economists, law professors, some of the country’s biggest experts who supported our case because, frankly, the court’s decision, and the lower court’s decision had real serious flaws in economic logic.”