Justice Department fires two senior antitrust attorneys, alleging insubordination
The Monday firings came after weeks of tension between the officials, Roger Alford and Bill Rinner, and Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, who runs the antitrust division. That division is tasked with investigating and suing companies for anticompetitive behavior.
Alford and Rinner had been put on administrative leave last week due to internal turmoil over how to handle a lawsuit against Hewlett Packard Enterprise for its proposed merger with Juniper Networks, a main competitor, a source said. The DOJ is in discussions to settle its challenge.
Their dismissals are part of a continuing battle inside the Justice Department between career officials and political appointees. Hundreds of career employees have left the DOJ – some of whom have publicly bashed the political employees – and dozens of others have been fired by department leadership.
A DOJ official confirmed the firings, citing 'insubordination.'
CNN has reached out to Alford and Rinner for comment. CBS News was first to report the dismissals.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared to reference disagreements within the division in mid-July, writing in a social media post that 'Anonymous efforts to divide this DOJ will not succeed,' pledging his support for Slater.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a spin-off of the old HP, announced its merger with Juniper Networks in January 2024. The tie-up was worth $14 billion at the time and combined HPE's cloud and networking services offering with Juniper's artificial intelligence and machine learning businesses. Juniper also sells networking equipment and solutions, but its AI business has become a hot commodity as HPE's rivals like IBM and Oracle pass it by on the promising new technology.
Weeks after the deal was announced, the Biden Justice Department sued to block the merger. It was concerned that the acquisition would combine the No. 2 and No. 3 wireless networking companies, taking a key competitor out of the market (Cisco is the market leader).
'This proposed merger would significantly reduce competition and weaken innovation, resulting in large segments of the American economy paying more for less from wireless technology providers,' said Omeed Assefi, the acting antitrust division head of the Justice Department, at the time.
At the time, the companies in a statement said the DOJ's lawsuit was 'fundamentally flawed.'
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