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The Trump administration’s Justice Department has fired two senior antitrust attorneys, Roger Alford and Bill Rinner, amid an internal dispute over the handling of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.
The merger, announced in January 2024, combined HPE’s cloud and networking services with Juniper’s artificial intelligence and machine learning businesses. The Justice Department initially sued to block the deal in early 2025, expressing concerns that the merger would reduce competition in the wireless networking market by combining the second and third largest companies, leaving Cisco as the dominant player.
However, a few months later, the department settled the case, allowing the merger to proceed after HPE agreed to divest some assets and license Juniper’s AI software to third parties. The fired attorneys reportedly opposed this settlement, leading to their dismissal for “insubordination.”
Critics have raised concerns about political interference in antitrust enforcement, warning that such actions could weaken the department’s ability to regulate corporate mergers effectively.
The controversy highlights ongoing tensions within the Justice Department about how aggressively to pursue antitrust cases, particularly in high-profile tech mergers.
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