Antitrust teams shuffle as oversight heats up

The lawyers who know where the bodies are buried in Washington antitrust cases are walking out the door at the same time Congress is calling the Federal Trade Commission in for its first full Senate oversight hearing in nearly six years. Bloomberg reported on April 8 that the Justice Department’s top civil antitrust litigator and three senior trial attorneys are leaving after the March 9 Live Nation deal. (news.bloomberglaw.com) Those departures are not random staff churn. The lawyers leaving worked on the government’s cases against Live Nation, Apple, and Google, and David Dahlquist had also served as lead trial counsel in the 2025 Google search remedies fight. (news.bloomberglaw.com) (justice.gov) The trigger was a settlement that landed in the middle of a trial. Bloomberg reported that some antitrust staff were angry because the March 9 agreement with Live Nation was negotiated without the trial team’s input and surprised even lead counsel. (news.bloomberglaw.com) That case was one of the biggest monopoly suits on the government’s docket. The Justice Department and a bipartisan group of states sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster on May 23, 2024, accusing them of monopolizing live entertainment and asking for relief that included structural changes. (justice.gov) (mass.gov) The settlement did not break up Ticketmaster. CBS reported that Live Nation agreed to pay $280 million in civil penalties to 40 states, open Ticketmaster’s technology to rival sellers, and divest 13 amphitheaters, while keeping Ticketmaster inside the company. (cbsnews.com) A big group of states refused to go along. Massachusetts said on March 9 that it and 26 other states would keep litigating because the federal deal “falls far short,” and Bloomberg said more than 30 states kept the trial going. (mass.gov) (news.bloomberglaw.com) Now add the second front: Capitol Hill. The Senate Commerce Committee said on April 8 that it will hold a full hearing called “Oversight of the Federal Trade Commission” on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time, with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Mark Meador as witnesses. (commerce.senate.gov) (ftc.gov 1) (ftc.gov 2) That hearing matters because the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department split antitrust work like two fire stations covering the same city. One agency’s caution can change how aggressively the other one pushes mergers, monopoly cases, and the long document demands known as second requests. (ftc.gov) The committee is not walking into a calm agency. Its own announcement says senators want to examine the Federal Trade Commission’s “priorities, approach, and productivity,” and Chairman Ted Cruz framed the hearing as a review of how Andrew Ferguson is remaking the agency after Lina Khan’s tenure. (commerce.senate.gov) Put those two moves together and the picture for big tech deals gets murkier, not clearer. The Justice Department is losing trial veterans just after a courtroom settlement that split the federal government from many states, while the Federal Trade Commission is heading into a public oversight session under new Republican leadership on April 15. (news.bloomberglaw.com) (commerce.senate.gov)