Trump Chooses a ‘Happy Warrior’ as His Antitrust Cop
Trump’s pick of Gail Slater as his Justice Department competition watchdog thrilled tech critics. But she may not be the monopoly killer they’re hoping for.
A decade or so ago, Gigi Sohn—then the head of Public Knowledge, an internet rights nonprofit—was working closely with Gail Slater, at the time the general counsel to a tech trade group called the Internet association, on the issue of net neutrality legislation. Sohn assumed Slater, who had previously been a legal adviser to a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, was a Democrat too.
Slater didn’t give her any reason to believe otherwise—until she ’fessed up one day.
“She said, ‘You know, Gigi, I’m not a Democrat,’” recalled Sohn, who is now a senior fellow and public advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. “I had no idea. I didn’t care.”
There was little confusion about Slater’s party affiliation this week, when President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to nominate her to lead antitrust enforcement at the Department of Justice. The job will make Slater one of Trump’s top antitrust cops in Washington, with the power to clip the wings of big tech companies, including through the department’s ongoing lawsuits against Google and Apple.