Gail Slater said on Thursday that she was leaving the top antitrust post at the Justice Department, ending a short tenure for the veteran tech and media lawyer who had faced tensions over her handling of corporate mergers.
Ms. Slater, who was the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, said in a post on X that she was leaving her role on Thursday with “great sadness and abiding hope.” She was in the job for roughly a year, after her confirmation in March.
“It was indeed the honor of a lifetime to serve in this role,” she said.
Her departure comes after months of mounting tension over her division’s work to determine whether companies violated antitrust laws in an administration that was willing to strike deals with large firms.
In August, her former top deputy, who had recently left his post, suggested that a large technology company had gone over Ms. Slater’s head to get the agency to drop its legal challenge to a multibillion dollar acquisition.
President Trump put Ms. Slater, 54, under more pressure when he said in December that he would be involved in the regulatory review of Netflix’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. His remarks, which came amid lobbying by both Netflix and Paramount, which has mounted a hostile bid for the studio, raised the prospect that politics would intrude upon the agency’s standard investigation into the deal. (Mr. Trump told NBC News this month that he had decided that he “shouldn’t be involved” in the deal and that the “Justice Department will handle it.”)
Ms. Slater is a veteran tech and media policy adviser. She previously worked as policy adviser for Vice President JD Vance when he served in the Senate and as tech policy adviser at the National Economic Council during Mr. Trump’s first presidential term.
Ms. Slater also has experience working for tech companies in the private sector. She was a lawyer at the Internet Association, a now-defunct trade association with members that included Google and Meta. She has also worked for the tech company Roku and the media company Fox Corp.
In Mr. Trump’s social media post in 2024 announcing that he was selecting Ms. Slater for the position, he said: “In her new role, Gail will help ensure that our competition laws are enforced, both vigorously and FAIRLY, with clear rules that facilitate, rather than stifle, the ingenuity of our greatest companies.”
David McCabe is a Times reporter who covers the complex legal and policy issues created by the digital economy and new technologies.
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