The Justice Department’s antitrust chief was pushed out after a series of lost battles against senior Trump administration officials pushing a lighter regulatory touch. “It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role,” Gail Slater announced on X Thursday morning.
Semafor has reported on weeks of mounting tensions between Slater’s more populist bent and let’s-make-a-deal DOJ brass. Settlement talks with ticketing giant Live Nation were the latest flashpoint, and Slater was bigfooted last week by Attorney General Pam Bondi on a personnel decision.
The administration’s most prominent anti-monopolist, Vice President JD Vance, Slater’s former boss, had stayed out of DOJ’s internal tensions, leaving Slater fighting a lonely battle she lost this week.
Whatever happened, happened fast: A senior official in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office dismissed Semafor’s inquiry Wednesday about Slater’s potential departure as “fake news.”