BARR: Bye, Bye Biden Lawfare

With President-elect Donald Trump’s recent nomination of Pam Bondi to serve as attorney general, and his naming of Gail Slater to head the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, the groundwork has been laid to begin unshackling America’s marketplace, which has for decades been hampered by unnecessary regulations and — during the Biden Administration — subjected to out-and-out lawfare by the very Department of Justice supposed to protect the marketplace from anti-competitive forces.

The question now is, how quickly can these abusive, economic lawfare practices be struck from the Department’s agenda and an originalist interpretation of the nation’s antitrust laws restored?

The mission of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to uphold federal law. The Department, however, cannot and has never carried out this mission in a vacuum. As a component of the executive branch of the federal government, it operates necessarily — and appropriately — according to the underlying policy preferences of the elected president.

It bears reminding that Democrats lost the presidential election in November. Whether the losers like it or not, President-elect Trump has every right to choose individuals to occupy top positions at the Justice Department who will respect and implement the policies that clearly and openly were at the foundation of his Nov. 5 electoral victory.

Moreover, Trump is fully empowered to populate the top echelons of the Department with men and women who – unlike his soon-to-be predecessor – actually respect the rule of law and who will not employ the powers of the Justice Department to undermine legal norms and the institutions our Founders so carefully crafted.

For example, in the Bizarro World of the Biden Administration, when a state government – the Commonwealth of Virginia – moved to protect the integrity of its voting processes by stopping illegal immigrants from voting, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia to prevent it from taking such measures!

When a U.S. citizen named Elon Musk offered, through his legally constituted, pro-Trump super PAC to give $1 million a day to select signers of his petition to protect the First and Second Amendments, Biden’s Justice Department stepped in to try to stop him (they did not succeed).

In response to such weird moves by the Justice Department, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton asked the million-dollar question: why had not the Department stopped left-wing PACs from deploying the exact same strategy: “Left-wing organizations often promote voter-registration sweepstakes,” Cotton wrote. “Michelle Obama’s voter-registration group offered individuals who provided their registration information a chance to win a free trip to Las Vegas. But where are the threats of legal consequences for liberals?” The question answers itself.

When President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris needed a scapegoat for the high housing inflation caused by their own economic policies, the Justice Department did the bidding of leftwing groups like the “Revolving Door Project,” and actually sued pricing software, such as “RealPage,” that are used lawfully by landlords.

Before the 2024 election, the rent-pricing lawsuit brought by the Biden Justice Department was mentioned repeatedly in Kamala Harris campaign news releases and speeches. As noted correctly by the Federalist Society and numerous other groups expert in federal antitrust law, the RealPage suit had no legal justification whatsoever, but rather was concocted purely for political theater and electoral puffery.

Fortunately, come January, there will be a new sheriff in town — one whose Justice Department picks illustrate respect for the rule of law and who do not view the Department as an extended political arm of the political campaign that brought the president to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gail Slater, Trump’s Antitrust Division appointee, has a long and distinguished track record of promoting free markets and pro-competitive policies, including at the Federal Trade Commission, in the first Trump administration, and with Sen. JD Vance.

For her part, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has been an outspoken critic of the abusive lawfare practiced by the Biden Department of Justice she is in line to head following Trump’s January 20th swearing-in. She also represented Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial and is on record declaring that “the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.”

With his selections of Bondi and Slater, Trump has signaled clearly that the U.S. Department of Justice will once again prioritize protecting the rule of law rather than throwing roadblocks in its path. And that’s good news for us all.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and serves as head of Liberty Guard.