Shortly after Jonathan Kanter took over the Justice Department’s antitrust division in November 2021, the agency secured a further $50 million to research monopolies, dismantle criminal cartels and block mergers.
To rejoice, Mr. Kanter bought a prop of an enormous check, placed it outside his office and wrote on the check’s note: “Break ’em up.”
Since then, Kanter, 50, has championed that philosophy, becoming a key architect of crucial effort in a long time to fight the concentration of power in corporate America. The biggest twist got here on Thursday when the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. In an 88-page lawsuit, the federal government argued that Apple violated antitrust laws with practices designed to maintain customers hooked on iPhones and make them less prone to switch to competing devices.
The lawsuit joins two Department of Justice antitrust cases against Google that allege that the corporate has illegally strengthened monopolies. Mr. Kanter’s employees have also challenged quite a few corporate mergers, including lawsuits searching for to stop JetBlue Airways from buying Spirit Airlines.
“We want to help real people by making sure our antitrust laws work for workers, consumers, businesses and protect our democratic values,” Kanter said in a January interview. He declined to comment on the Google cases and other pending legal proceedings.
At a press conference in reference to Thursday’s Apple lawsuit, Kanter compared the motion to previous Justice Department complaints leveled by Standard Oil, AT&T and Microsoft. The lawsuit goals to guard “the market for innovations that we don’t see yet,” he said.
Kanter and Lina Khan, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, have now taken motion against 4 of the six largest public technology corporations in a radical push to curb the industry’s power. The FTC has individually filed antitrust lawsuits against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, and Amazon.
But Mr. Kanter and Ms. Khan are wanting to see how far they’ll take their efforts. The November election could remove President Biden from the White House and take Mr. Kanter and Ms. Khan with him.
More than two dozen individuals who knew Mr. Kanter, including current and former Justice Department employees, described his two-decade profession. Some spoke anonymously, describing confidential government deliberations and presentations.
Mr. Kanter grew up within the Queens, New York, apartment where his parents still live. After graduating from Forest Hills High School, he attended the State University of New York at Albany and then law school at Washington University in St. Louis.
“I grew up around teachers, police officers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers and people who worked really hard,” he said, doing so with the “belief that the American Dream really provided people with opportunities and possibilities for a better life.” Future generations.”
He said he tied antitrust enforcement to these values because “it’s about ensuring everyone has access to those opportunities and ensuring people can succeed on their very own.”
After earning his law degree, Mr. Kanter worked at the FTC and then joined large law firms such as Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and Paul Weiss. At one point he represented Microsoft. As the company launched an offensive against Google, which ate its lunch in Internet searches, Mr. Kanter said in Washington that Google deserved additional scrutiny.
He later made similar arguments to other Google critics, such as News Corp and Yelp, and said regulators should also investigate additional tech giants. At the same time, he defended the merger of companies in separate industries.
Kanter’s work against some of the tech giants earned him fans among those who believed that antitrust laws were a necessary tool for a fairer economy.
“Here’s an insider who also came to very similar conclusions,” Ms. Khan said in a November interview.
After Biden confirmed his nomination, Kanter, who often favors and once wore formal peaked lapels Photo session The A. Lange & Söhne dress watch, which retails for $34,500, showed employees its antitrust plan, in keeping with people acquainted with the presentation.
Kanter marked his initiatives with catchy codenames. The agency’s plan to quickly resolve active legal cases has earned Gen Z the nickname “Real Time AF,” short for real-time antitrust filings. He called the plan to investigate senior corporate executives the “Billionaire Accountability Project.”
Kanter told his team that he wanted the department to be able to handle 30 civil cases and another 30 criminal cases at any given time. He called the plan “30 for 30.”
The agency was already stretched thin, and some staff believed Kanter was setting lofty goals, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Time spent in private practice also cast a shadow. Mr. Kanter did not initially work on the lawsuits against Google because he had represented its rivals for years. When he can’t work on cases, including those challenging JetBlue’s purchase of Spirit, his chief deputy, Doha Mekki, manages them.
Despite this, Kanter actively participated in lawsuits against technology giants.
When Google’s antitrust case over internet search went to trial last year, it told government lawyers to make their case more clearly and distinctly that the sheer scale of the company’s operations had entrenched its power and made it harder for its rivals – the two people in possession – to compete, knowledge of the case said. This idea was front and center as the case played out in a Washington courtroom last fall. (The ruling is expected later this year.)
Kanter also oversaw the final months of the Justice Department’s investigation into Google’s control over online advertising technology. He argued to colleagues that the government should insist that the lawsuit be decided by a jury rather than a judge, which is the norm in similar civil cases, said a person familiar with the matter. A jury trial is scheduled to begin in September.
Kanter’s work was met with criticism, who wondered whether he and his compatriots were pushing the boundaries of antitrust law too far, harming the economy.
William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and former FTC chairman, said Kanter has not yet secured a victory in the agency’s sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple and Google.
“He’s kind of still looking around for a more significant trophy to hang on the mantelpiece,” he said. “If you win one of these monopolization cases, you can take the rest of the decade off.”
In a January interview, Kanter defended his efforts to change the way the agency does business. He said the world has changed radically in the last 30 years. People communicate through new media, obtain information from a variety of sources, and trade on dominant platforms.
“It is important that if we are to ensure antitrust enforcement meets the goals of a modern economy, we recognize these changes,” he said. “And then we adapt to make sure we are enforcing the letter of antitrust law and applicable precedents. But we enforce the law in a way that reflects the realities of today’s economy.”
Tripp Mickle contributed a report from San Francisco. Jack Begg contributed to research.
