President-elect Donald Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, “I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” Well, as the old saying goes, people are policy, and Trump’s recent picks of populist, pro-consumer watchdogs who believe in equality under the law to serve at the Justice Department are proving that he meant every word of what he said then.
On Dec. 4, Trump nominated Gail Slater, an Oxford-trained attorney, to serve as the leader of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Two weeks earlier, he chose Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, for U.S. attorney general.
Like me, Slater is a longtime adviser to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. Vance loves her because, unlike many conservative attorneys today, Slater has proven that she is unafraid to challenge not just unchecked government power, but also unchecked corporate power when it negatively affects people’s lives.
Take Big Tech, which pays billions to maintain its monopoly power by restricting its competition. Vance knows from Slater’s time with him, and Trump knows from her time serving as the top tech voice on the Trump National Economic Council, that she is eager to take on these behemoths.
So does the larger Big Tech accountability movement. Matt Stoller, who works with the anti-Big Tech American Economic Liberties Project, wrote on X that Slater’s selection “is a very powerful statement that Trump wants to take on Big Tech.” At the same time, Mike Davis, the founder of the Internet Accountability Project, said, Google should be “shaking in its boots” after Trump selected Slater.
But Slater will not just attack bad corporate actors. She also has the opportunity to clear the docket of all politically motivated Biden-era cases that have drained too much time, money, and resources — time, money, and resources that the Antitrust Division should have been using to focus on actual bad actors such as Google and Amazon.
The most infamous of such politically motivated Biden cases is the Biden Antitrust Division’s bogus “price-fixing” attack on people’s rent pricing software, which, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, arose for no reason other than to “distract voters from frustration over the Biden Administration’s inflationary policies.” This suit attracted the attention of senior Trump campaign staffers for being a transparently obnoxious case of politically motivated lawfare.
With polls finding inflation, and housing inflation in particular, a top campaign issue, and most voters rightfully blaming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the White House sought out a scapegoat and decided upon this software. The Biden DOJ knew how baseless this suit was at the time of filing. After all, this type of technology has historically recommended that property owners reduce their prices in times when inflation is better under control. Nevertheless, Biden’s DOJ goons also recognized that filing it would give them someone else to blame for their economic failures, and that was the whole point.
Fortunately, Slater knows that antitrust law is for, according to the DOJ’s own website, ending “anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers and workers of the benefits of competition.” Notably absent from this list is “filing baseless suits to help the presidential campaign of the administration in power.” As such, expect Slater to get rid of every politically motivated Biden case that is currently on the books to ensure the department stays on mission.
Of course, lawfare isn’t just happening in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. From suits against states that won’t let illegal immigrants vote to bogus cases against Tesla CEO Elon Musk for merely raising money for Trump, the Biden administration has perpetuated lawfare throughout the rest of the DOJ too. That’s where Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general nominee, will prove instrumental.
Bondi, who has already fought partisan “justice” officials as an impeachment lawyer for Trump, is a fighter who has promised to clean house at the DOJ and ensure justice is finally brought back to the larger department.
In an August 2023 interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Bondi said, “When Republicans take back the White House … the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones” and “the investigators will be investigated.”
Why? “Because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows. … Now, they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated.” She emphasized that “we can clean house next term, and that’s what has to happen.”
With two-thirds of people currently viewing the DOJ negatively, a clean house is exactly what we need.
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That’s precisely what Bondi and Slater will provide: a new beginning that carries this vital department back to its roots in the rule of law. It shouldn’t be controversial to treat everyone, regardless of influence or political affiliations, fairly and the same.
And in this divided, polarizing political climate, that is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Andrew Surabian is a Republican strategist and longtime senior adviser to both Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. He is a veteran of all three Trump campaigns and a former special assistant to President Donald Trump in the White House.