Roger Alford is a law professor at Notre Dame, and a veteran of the Trump I administration where he was the Department of Justice’s top antitrust official for international affairs. In the Tump II reign, he took up the role of principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s antitrust division. But he’s been forced out of that role, and based on recent comments, his position against the merger between competitors Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Juniper Networks is at the root of his ouster.
Initially the DOJ sued to block the merger, but HPE hired MAGA influencers Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz. Since that fortuitous hiring, HPE reached a settlement with the government to move the merger forward,
And Alford is not happy about it.
In a speech at the Technology Policy Institute in Aspen, Colorado, Alford called on the courts to undo the damage the alleged corruption hath wrought, saying, “I hope the [federal court overseeing the Justice Department’s proposed resolution] blocks the HPE/Juniper merger,” and urging them to “examine the surprising truth of what happened.”Alford assured the audience, “If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too.”
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Alford places a lot of the blame on two of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s lackeys — Chad Mizelle, spouse to… questionable federal judge Kathryn Mizelle, and Stanley Woodward.
Alford said Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, is prone to favoring outside lawyers and lobbyists with whom he is friends. Mizelle and another top aide to Bondi, Stanley Woodward, played significant roles in how the department settled with HPE and Juniper in June, Alford said. Trump has nominated Woodward to be the Justice Department’s third-ranking official.
“Chad Mizelle accepts party meetings and makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend,” Alford said. “Aware of this injustice, companies are hiring lawyers and influence peddlers to bolster their MAGA credentials and pervert traditional law enforcement.”
Alford continued, “Although I am limited in what I can say, it is my opinion that in the HPE/Juniper merger scandal Chad Mizelle and Stanley Woodward perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law.” “I am not given to hyperbole, and I do not say that lightly.”
Alford’s description of life in the antitrust division reads downright dystopian, with MAGA influence the new currency of the day:
Is this the new normal, with every law firm hiring an influence peddler to dual track and sidestep the litigation and merger review process? That’s what law firms are now considering. The Department of Justice is now overwhelmed with lobbyists with little antitrust expertise going above the Antitrust Division leadership seeking special favors with warm hugs. On numerous occasions in a variety of matters we implored our superiors and the lawyers on the other side to call off the jackals. But to no avail. Today cases are being resolved based on political connections, not the legal merits.
But his fire comments (you can read them in full here) didn’t just focus on the DOJ employees Alford believes betrayed their principles. He also had choice words for the lobbyists.
Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz have made a Faustian bargain of trading on relationships with powerful people to reportedly earn million-dollar success fees by helping corporations undermine Trump’s antitrust agenda, hurt working class Americans, break the rules, and then try to cover it up. Outside the small circle of transactional MAGA friends seeking and giving favors, do these lobbyists and their friends in power actually know what traditional or populist conservatives think about them? When lobbyists like Mike Davis and Will Levi go to their Supreme Court clerkship reunions, how do honorable conservative lawyers who clerked for the great Justices Alito and Gorsuch view their shenanigans? Do the executives and the lawyers who hire these lobbyists know what the antitrust bar and the Division’s leaders and lawyers think of their behavior? They have long memories.
And Alford makes it clear that he believes his stance against corruption is behind his firing.
My position while I served in government was simple: lobbyists and lawyers are subordinate to the law. Yet by stating this truth, I was dismissed for insubordination. My termination letter is now framed and hangs on the wall in my office at Notre Dame. I joke with friends that I’ve never been fired before, and I’ve been working since my first job as a young teenager at the Dairy Queen in Sherman, Texas. All it took to be fired were lobbyists exerting influence on my superiors to retaliate against me for protecting the rule of law against the rule of lobbyists.
But a DOJ spokesperson, when asked for comment, had a very different take, “Roger Alford is the James Comey of antitrust—pursuing blind self-promotion and ego, while ignoring reality.” And HPE provided the following statement, “Any suggestion that HPE procured the settlement through unethical or improper means is false and irresponsible.”
Alford supposes that he’ll be written off as “naïve,” and there’s a ring of truth there. I mean, he *was* working for the Trump administration. That’s the guy who bullied nine major law firms into giving him almost a billion dollars in free legal services to get out from under unconstitutional executive orders. The same one who finagled $20 million in free air time from CBS because he didn’t like 60 Minutes’ journalism. Who got himself a “free” plane from Qatar. Pay-to-play is the name of the game in 2025, and the antitrust division is only taking their lead from the top.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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