By Brent Kendall
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department official expected to lead
an antitrust investigation into Google's business practices says he
favors taking a broad view of whether Big Tech dominance is harming
innovation, product quality and consumer choice.
Makan Delrahim, a 49-year-old assistant U.S. attorney general,
has been in the spotlight since The Wall Street Journal reported
May 31 that his antitrust division was planning an expansive probe
of Alphabet Inc.'s Google. It is an investigation that could shape
the search giant's future and the broader competitive landscape for
a generation.
In his first extended interview since then, Mr. Delrahim said
that today's dominant tech companies have developed an array of
innovative products that consumers enjoy, from search to social
media, many of them with low or no prices. But that didn't mean
there aren't issues for the government to potentially address.
"You have some of these technology companies touching so many
aspects of people's lives," he said. "The question is: Do they harm
competition, and if so, how?"
Mr. Delrahim said he sees interest across the political spectrum
in addressing concerns about the power of Silicon Valley and, more
broadly, about declining competition. "The call for stronger
antitrust enforcement is bipartisan," he said. "This transcends
political parties or views."
The Justice Department hasn't confirmed that it is preparing a
Google investigation and Mr. Delrahim steered away from discussing
any one company's specific business practices. Mr. Delrahim, who
came to the Justice Department after a nine-month stint in the
White House counsel's office, acknowledged that any Big Tech
examination could present challenges, including for government
resources.
"But we have incredibly smart lawyers...that really understand
how the law applies to these industries," he said. "I absolutely
have all the confidence that we have the people to dig into
this."
Mr. Delrahim immigrated to the U.S. from Iran at the age of 9,
during the revolution there. He learned English and spent his
teenage years in suburban Los Angeles, working weekends and summers
at his father's service station.
Known widely around Washington as just Makan, he has served in
various roles in the executive and legislative branches, including
as a top aide to former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) and as a deputy
assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust
division during the George W. Bush administration. He also spent
more than a decade in private practice, a stint that included
antitrust counseling and lobbying.
He once advised Google on its acquisition of internet ad company
DoubleClick in 2007, a gig that has prompted Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
a Democratic presidential candidate and top Big Tech critic, to
call for Mr. Delrahim to recuse himself in any Google probe.
The Justice Department hasn't responded publicly to Ms. Warren
but Mr. Delrahim has said generally that he gets advice from career
department ethics officials on any potential conflicts.
Mr. Delrahim joined the Trump administration as a White House
counsel, where he was a central figure in shepherding Supreme Court
Justice Neil Gorsuch through the confirmation process. In two years
as Justice Department antitrust chief, Mr. Delrahim has crafted a
blend of antitrust enforcement that follows neither the traditional
Republican nor Democratic playbooks, at times confounding both his
supporters and critics.
Seven weeks into the job, he brought a lawsuit challenging
AT&T Inc.'s acquisition of Time Warner, which the government
lost. Now, he is engaged in down-to-the-wire deliberations over
whether to allow T-Mobile US Inc. to buy wireless rival Sprint
Corp., a decision viewed as one of the most important of his
tenure.
Several large mergers have passed muster under his watch -- with
strings attached -- such as Bayer AG's acquisition of Monsanto Co.,
in which the antitrust division mandated the sale of a record $9
billion in assets to preserve competition.
In several instances Mr. Delrahim has favored middle-ground
solutions, an approach that could inform any Big Tech case.
While some lawmakers at both ends of the political spectrum have
called for the splitting of megacompanies into parts, such a
drastic remedy is rare, and Mr. Delrahim has professed to be a fan
of the compromise outcome in the last major monopolization case the
Justice Department brought -- against Microsoft Corp. in 1998.
After a circuitous route through the court system, including one
initial ruling that mandated a breakup, Microsoft reached a
settlement with the government to change some aspects of its
commercial behavior but stay intact.
Mr. Delrahim has said the settlement stimulated the very
competition and innovation that led to the rise of Google and
others that he is now charged with potentially reining in.
Mr. Delrahim throughout his tenure has been adamant that
politics plays no role in his antitrust decision making, and that
he hasn't been steered by the White House.
"Still there has been no influence in our decisions," he said in
the interview.
President Trump's public comments continue to complicate Mr.
Delrahim's tenure. Mr. Trump pledged as a candidate to block
AT&T's deal for Time Warner, which owned CNN, a network the
president has denounced. Recently the president suggested that
customers stop using AT&T's services to force CNN to pull back
on "negative" coverage.
Separately, the president last month accused Google of favoring
Democrats and trying to "rig" the election. "We should be suing
Google and Facebook and all that, which perhaps we will," Mr. Trump
said in a Fox Business Network interview.
The whirlwind of the past couple of years has left some in the
antitrust division dissatisfied, according to people familiar with
the matter, who say there is a trust gap between some career
staffers and Mr. Delrahim's front office, which runs a tightly
controlled, top-down decision-making process.
Mr. Delrahim said he recently began holding a meeting each week
with every career head of the different sections within the
antitrust division to talk about pending business, as well as
implementing a quarterly question-and-answer session for anyone in
the division who wants to attend.
The Justice Department's planned push on Big Tech comes as Mr.
Delrahim has a new boss, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who in
his January confirmation hearings cited an interest in antitrust
issues, especially in the tech sector.
After Mr. Barr's confirmation, many in D.C. antitrust circles
speculated that Mr. Delrahim's days at the antitrust division could
be numbered.
The two men had clashed during the AT&T case, when Mr. Barr
was a member of Time Warner's board and one of a handful of people
in a confrontational meeting with Mr. Delrahim two weeks before the
department sued. They later offered conflicting recollections of
the meeting in legal papers, with Mr. Barr questioning the Justice
Department's motivations.
But after settling in at Justice, Mr. Barr, who has known Mr.
Delrahim for years, sought out his antitrust chief, put his arm
around him and assured him he was on solid footing at the
department, people familiar with the matter said.
"I have no intentions to leave," Mr. Delrahim said.
--Keach Hagey and Sadie Gurman contributed to this article.
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 07, 2019 07:14 ET (11:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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