By Bill Baer
Federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday about high-level pressure to recommend a reduced sentence for Roger Stone was remarkable and disturbing. But the hearing also revealed a parallel story of high-level, seemingly politically motivated interference in a corner of the Justice Department long thought immune from such meddling: the Antitrust Division.
The whistleblower testimony came from John Elias, a career antitrust enforcer who served under one Democratic and two Republican presidents, and, full disclosure, was my chief of staff when I was the acting associate attorney general at the tail end of the Obama administration. Elias later was chief of staff under Makan Delrahim, Trump’s assistant attorney general for antitrust.
