“The Justice Department was preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world’s largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Settle it, the president told a senior DOJ official, the official later told associates.”
“The intervention was bizarre. The antitrust trial against Live Nation—which also owns Ticketmaster, a combination that draws relentless consumer criticism—was set to begin March 2, just days away. Trump had vowed to crack down on the industry just a year earlier when he signed an executive order targeting ticket-scalping and exploitative pricing in live entertainment. DOJ officials and the company had spent months exchanging settlement proposals but had little to show for it, and some in the government had been pushing to break up the giant.”
“White House involvement in law-enforcement matters, once taboo, is a regular feature of Trump’s second term.”
