Photo Credit: David Trinks
Two former antitrust attorneys at the DOJ had strong words for the department and its abrupt settlement with Live Nation just a week into the trial.
Two former antitrust attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice—both of whom were central to its case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster—have expressed outrage at the department over its abrupt settlement with the company just a week into the trial back in March.
The case, filed under the Biden Administration following years of work, was suddenly settled (sparked by urging from the Trump Administration) after a closed-door meeting between DOJ officials and Live Nation. That drew the ire of U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian, who presided over the trial and was utterly blindsided by the settlement.
“When I stood up and gave the opening statement in this case, I believed that we were going to win,” said David Dahlquist, former Deputy Director of Litigation, who led the case against Live Nation. He spoke at the National Independent Venue Association’s (NIVA) conference, which began in Minneapolis this week. “And when the settlement was entered, I still believed that we were going to win […] I knew the case, I knew the witnesses, I knew the evidence.”
Dahlquist confirmed that he and his team were not part of the negotiations that led to the settlement. This indicates what earlier reports already surmised—that the settlement was struck by officials at the highest levels of the administration. The Wall Street Journal also alleged that President Trump was personally involved.
“I did not have, or had not seen, the settlement terms until the morning that we showed up in front of the judge [the morning] that it was announced,” said Dahlquist. “I was neither asked nor did I provide input into that settlement that was ultimately entered into by the Department of Justice. We stayed on, myself and the trial team […]; we helped the transition, everything to the states, to make sure they could go forward.”
Indeed, a group of nearly 30 states continued the lawsuit, and in April, a jury concluded that Live Nation/Ticketmaster did, in fact, hold an illegal monopoly on the United States ticketing market.
Numerous officials, including Roger Alford, former deputy to the Assistant Attorney General, believed that Live Nation’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster was problematic from the start.
“The promises of 16 years of compliance have done nothing to fix the [ticketing] market, and so we’re in a very unusual situation where we’ve had 16 years of failed promises and that I think will weigh into the judge’s determination,” said Alford, referring to the 2010 consent decree between the government and Live Nation that allowed the merger to move forward.
“I was fired [from the DOJ] in July of 2025 for standing up to inappropriate lobbying,” said Alford. “We wanted to resolve these cases on the merits, [former Assistant Attorney General and antitrust chief] Gail Slater and I and the other deputies. There was lobbying that was occurring […] in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster case. We stood up to that and said, ‘That’s wrong,’ and by doing that, we were fired.”
Last month, Alford wrote in a prepared statement that it “is deeply troubling that the Antitrust Division is engaged in selective non-prosecution of political allies in critical cases such as Live Nation/Ticketmaster. Such a practice has become all too common in other cases as well. Selective non-prosecution of antitrust cases will lead to anticompetitive mergers, collusion between competitors, and monopoly abuses. It should not be this way.”
