I hate it when greedy corporations rip us off and take advantage of us—and above all, I hate it when they get away with it because they are politically powerful. As Colorado’s Attorney General and our next Governor, I have a simple credo–I fight for you, and I will take on any company, no matter how powerful, that breaks the rules and harms you.

My credo is not shared by President Trump and the Trump Department of Justice (“DOJ”). Rather, we are seeing an emerging pattern from the DOJ—one rule for MAGA Inc. and another rule for the rest of us. While it may not be widely acknowledged yet, the corruption of the Trump Justice Department presents a clear and present threat to Colorado consumers, including whether we can afford concerts or cable TV service. That threat brings me to several antitrust cases I am prosecuting: the Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopolization case and the Nexstar/Tegna broadcast merger challenge.

In the Live Nation case, I worked from the very beginning with the DOJ to bring a monopolization case against the company because it is responsible for jacking up the prices for concert tickets. As the evidence in the antitrust case made clear, company executives even joked to one another about how they ripped off consumers, stating that fans were “so stupid” for paying the inflated charges and boasting that they were “robbing them blind.”  

The evidence presented in the Live Nation antitrust case is textbook monopoly behavior. Despite this powerful evidence, because the company had the right political connections (they hired former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway to work on their antitrust case, for example), the top Trump DOJ leadership announced–to the surprise of the judge and the team trying the case–a settlement that was a sweetheart deal for the company. The Trump DOJ tried to get states to join this settlement, too, but almost all of us–including a number of Republican state AGs–refused to do so. That means this case is still going forward, with the states prosecuting the case in court on our own.

And on the heels of the Live Nation settlement by the DOJ, we just witnessed another example of how the Trump Administration disregards the rule of law–the commitment to treat everyone equally and fairly–as it applies different rules for its friends and allies. In Denver, the companies that own the two leading local network affiliates–9News (Tegna) and Fox31 (Nexstar)–are planning to merge. That merger would mean that 57% of the market would be under the control of one company. If allowed to happen, this merger would put Nexstar in a position to raise the fees paid by cable and satellite companies and fire many trusted local reporters as part of consolidating the two local news operations. Because of such harms, the DOJ and the Federal Communications Commission have never before allowed such a merger to go through. That makes the Trump Administration’s actions now to allow the Nexstar/Tegna merger to advance all the more shocking.

The Trump Administration is like no administration since the Watergate era. During Watergate (and it was captured on tape), President Nixon called the Deputy Attorney General to say that the DOJ needed to drop a merger challenge against ITT because the company made a large campaign contribution. That was one of many violations of the public trust by the Nixon White House. After Watergate, laws were enacted to prevent corruption and “pay for play” political deals like the ITT merger. But the Trump Administration is uninterested in handling cases on their merits or in following the law. Instead, the President is all too willing to declare what companies he likes and deserves favored treatment. In the Nexstar/Tegna broadcast merger, for example, he said on social media that “We need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks…GET THAT DEAL DONE.”

For consumers who care about their cable or satellite bills (and who doesn’t?!) and for citizens who care about diverse voices in the news they consume (same), the President’s directive to approve a merger regardless of the law is a direct challenge to our ideals of fair play and an open marketplace of ideas (recall that Nexstar was the company that forced its ABC stations to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air to please the Trump Administration). If our case is successful, we will have a happy ending to this story, with Colorado and a coalition of states preventing this merger from taking place, in an important fight for consumers, democracy, and the rule of law. Like the Live Nation case, we’re taking a stand against the corruption and lawlessness of the DOJ and taking a stand for consumers. And we are seeing important progress, as the judge in the case has prevented the companies from merging and will hold a hearing on April 7 to consider the request to bar the merger while we make our case to stop it permanently.

If you have read this far, you might be interested in an even deeper dive on these issues, which is what I offered in my speech last week to the American Bar Association’s annual meeting of the Antitrust Section. I highlighted the above points, put them into context, and explained that we are going to need legislation to ensure our antitrust laws are enforced and future presidents cannot continue corrupting our justice system and allowing those politically connected corporations to mistreat consumers.

We have important work ahead, particularly in the face of a corrupted DOJ, to fight for consumers and defend the rule of law. It is an honor to do that work and I am so grateful for your support.