George W. Bush official spots 'fatal' problem in Trump DOJ probe

What happened

AlterNet reports that the Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC after the networks temporarily stopped sharing pooled White House video coverage. The networks acted after the White House barred CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the grounds and revoked journalists’ press passes.

The administration characterizes that coordinated response as a potentially illegal boycott under the Sherman Act. William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chairman appointed by George W. Bush, called that legal theory “feeble” and said President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on news organizations could be fatal to the government’s case by supporting an argument that the investigation is retaliatory.

Other antitrust specialists quoted by AlterNet questioned whether withholding coverage constitutes a boycott involving commercial competition. The networks resumed pooled coverage after a federal judge ordered access restored, although restrictions involving Air Force One pool assignments reportedly remained. No court had determined whether the networks violated antitrust law.

The power runs through the White House

The networks possess substantial corporate power, but they do not control access to federal property, issue press credentials or deploy the Justice Department. The administration does.

That distinction is the center of the story. The White House excluded disfavored outlets. Other networks responded by suspending a cooperative coverage arrangement. The Justice Department then placed those networks under federal scrutiny. Treating this merely as a technical antitrust dispute obscures the sequence of institutional force.

Retaliation is the legal problem

Kovacic’s warning is not that Trump committed the tactical error of speaking too plainly. It is that his public hostility may help establish an improper governmental purpose. The president’s statements give the networks evidence for their claim that federal authority is being used to punish coverage rather than remedy harm to competition.

Bill Baer, who led antitrust enforcement during the Obama administration, said the investigation “looks like total retaliation.” That remains an expert assessment, not a judicial finding. But it identifies the obvious constitutional concern: law enforcement cannot become a penalty system for editorial disobedience.

Antitrust as a pretext

The administration argues that commercial competitors coordinated their conduct, potentially implicating the Sherman Act. Yet the specialists quoted by AlterNet challenged the missing element in that theory: competitive injury.

Clay Calvert of the American Enterprise Institute said the networks were choosing whether to provide coverage, not boycotting a business activity. Diana Moss of the Progressive Policy Institute noted that unlawful group boycotts ordinarily concern restrictions on competition. On the reporting presented, the government has identified coordination but not convincingly explained how that coordination suppressed market competition.

That weakness matters politically. A strained legal theory can still impose costs: lawyers, uncertainty, executive attention and the warning that solidarity with excluded journalists may bring federal investigation.

The punishment is the process

The administration does not need to prevail in court for the investigation to exert pressure. Opening a probe places the prestige and coercive capacity of the Justice Department behind a message to news organizations: resistance to White House access decisions may be recast as suspected illegality.

ABC’s separate challenge to an FCC review of its broadcast licenses, alleging a First Amendment violation, deepens that pattern without proving that either proceeding is unlawful. Multiple regulatory fronts can magnify pressure even when each action is defended through a different statutory mechanism.

A system built for leverage

This episode reveals how executive power can migrate across institutions. A dispute over press access becomes an antitrust investigation; an editorial conflict becomes a licensing fight. The vocabulary changes, but the power relationship does not.

The central danger is not confusion about antitrust doctrine. It is the normalization of federal enforcement as leverage against organizations that resist presidential control. Courts may eventually reject the government’s theory. By then, the administration may already have demonstrated that dissent carries a process-shaped price.

Thanks to Alter Net

Source: George W. Bush official spots ‘fatal’ problem in Trump DOJ probe