• DOJ has lost its “sheen” as attorneys leave, disappointed in lack of trust in merits-based decisions, lost litigation opportunities
• Live Nation settlement, political interference in other mergers continues to tank morale
• FTC appears more focused on merits-based decisions, with exceptions

Morale at the Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust division is suffering as attrition and political lobbying continue to demoralize staff, according to interviews with antitrust attorneys and former DOJ staff conducted by this news service.

Attrition from the DOJ has been particularly high and is occurring at all levels, from junior employees to the senior level directors, according to four attorneys, two of whom recently left the agency.

“The amount of senior level departures speaks for itself, the mid and junior as well,” the first attorney with previous experience at the DOJ said.

A second attorney said that applications from the DOJ to their law firm from junior employees were strikingly high in the first months of 2026. It was notably not just the mid-career folks who have always tended to seek out the switch to private practice, this attorney said.

There is “definitely something going on there where [the DOJ] has lost its ‘sheen’ a little bit,” the second attorney said.

DOJ attorneys, including top-level leaders, have increasingly been recusing themselves from major cases as they prepare to exit the agency, said a third attorney with DOJ experience. It is common practice for government attorneys to do this while they put out feelers to the major law firms, this attorney said.

Some staff were also displeased with the agency’s mandate to return to the office five days a week, the third attorney said. The return to office is likely not an insignificant factor, this attorney said, “especially when it’s just arbitrary and basically consciously designed to make it less palatable to work there.”

In a reversal of the usual trend, a fourth attorney with DOJ experience noted that state attorneys’ general offices have been welcoming former federal enforcers at unprecedented rates. “I’ve lost count of how many people have left DOJ and are now at the California Attorney General’s office, working for Paula Blizzard,” this attorney said.

“The Trump administration has absolutely dropped the ball,” California attorney general Rob Bonta said at a press conference announcing the states’ lawsuit to block the Warner Bros. Discovery/Paramount deal. “They are greenlighting deals that their own antitrust section at the US DOJ knows and believes are unlawful, and they’re overriding them in the White House with political decisions.”

With the agency hollowed out, the “big question” is how long it will take to rebuild, said a fifth attorney with previous experience at the DOJ. After former assistant attorney general Gail Slater was pushed out and replaced with acting AAG Omeed Assefi in February, “there doesn’t seem to be a rush to replace when there is an acting [AAG],” this attorney said.

However, Assefi has since resigned from the DOJ for the private sector at the end of June. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward has been running the department’s day-to-day operations since mid-June, according to news reports. The White House will likely nominate Adam Candeub, the general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to the Slater’s former post, Bloomberg reported.

Politicization concerns 

Alleged political interference and lobbying in recent major DOJ decisions, such as HPE/Juniper, Anywhere/Compass and WBD/Paramount, have also likely tanked morale among staff, the attorneys agreed.

While political lobbying was likely not well-received by staff, the second attorney said it is important to keep it in perspective – while it does happen, it has happened in very few cases.

But those cases where it did happen were some of the most high-profile decisions the DOJ has made during this administration – and could have been exactly the kind of cases where staff hoped to make an impact, the attorneys agreed.

After Slater left, the last layer of merits-based decision-making at the leadership level left with her, the fourth attorney said. There were already political appointees overruling her on decisions, but she remained as a sort of “buffer” of “relatively normal decision making,” they said.

A sixth attorney said that Slater reportedly would not share speeches in advance with the White House, despite being asked to do so.

In March, the agency settled the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopolization case just days into a trial, to the surprise not only of the states’ AGs collaborating on the case, but DOJ litigation staff as well. David Dahlquist, then the acting director of civil antitrust litigation, and three additional attorneys resigned from the department in the fallout of the settlement, according to a Bloomberg report.

That settlement was “definitely the kind of thing that’s going to bring people’s morale down,” the fourth attorney said. The decision may have left some DOJ attorneys wondering about the purpose of working late nights and weekends just for it all to get undercut at the end, this attorney said.

Staff likely had a sense that they were “totally cut out” of the process, the third attorney said. And it likely discouraged people who hoped to gain valuable litigation experience from their time in the government, this attorney said. “If you have that expectation and then the work is pulled out from under you at the last second, it really sucks,” they said.

The first attorney said that despite the news cycle, many folks at both agencies remain engrossed in the work, believe in the mission, and are “just trying to keep their heads down and work.”

There has not been a difference in how DOJ staff interact with merging parties and their counsel that the first attorney said they had noticed. “I don’t think that that’s big of a difference on a day-to-day basis,” this attorney said.

While the departures are real, a seventh attorney said that it is important to remember that “staffers are the same as they were during the prior administration.”

There is always some staff turnover from one administration to the next, especially when a new political party is coming into office. But the second, third and fourth attorneys agreed that the changes at the agency since January 2025 amount to more than that. “This was a really unusual transition,” the fourth attorney said.

Since January 2025 the DOJ has issued far fewer second requests than the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on mergers tracked by this news service. And the agency has not brought a single merger litigation since the HPE/Juniper case filed under Assefi in the first month of the Trump administration.

“I do think the turmoil at the top has implications for the number of cases they bring,” the second attorney said. And when the DOJ does take an interest in mergers, this attorney said they saw involvement from the front office earlier.

DOJ vs FTC

While things may not be perfect at the DOJ’s sister agency, the FTC, morale appears to be higher and attrition lower there, the attorneys said. “The distinction between morale across the two is pretty striking,” the third attorney said.

The FTC appears to be functioning more “normally,” and has brought multiple cases on merits-based antitrust claims, the second and third attorneys said.

“[FTC Chairman Andrew] Ferguson actually appears to be quite hands-off and gives staff leeway to investigate,” the sixth attorney said. That can sometimes make things unpredictable for merging parties’ counsel, this attorney said.

The fifth attorney agreed that there has been more stability at the FTC but noted that it has been “much more difficult to have meaningful conversations at the FTC” on deal matters.

Ferguson came out of the gate strong on “culture war” issues such as the movement against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and environmental, social and governance (ESG) protocols, the fourth attorney said. While that may have worried staff initially, things appear to have settled, this attorney said. Now, “the DOJ has at least caught up and maybe exceeded that,” they said.

Fewer allegations of outsized political interference at the FTC could be one reason why the morale issues there do not appear as dire as they do at the DOJ, the third attorney said. “You’ve got some politicization there for sure, but they, by and large, seem pretty functional,” this attorney said.

The FTC’s structure as a multi-member commission inherently makes lobbying efforts more difficult than at the DOJ, where the chief of the antitrust section answers directly to the president’s appointed attorney general, the third attorney said. Practically, it would be more difficult for a lobbyist to convince even the two current commissioners than one DOJ leader, this attorney said.

However, Chair Ferguson has alluded to his belief that the FTC is not an independent agency and should answer to the executive branch. And after cabinetmakers American Woodmark and MasterBrand hired Trump-aligned lobbyists Miller Strategies, the deal was cleared without conditions, sparking concerns that the lobbying efforts may have blazed the transaction’s path.

Political pressure could also make less news at the FTC simply because that agency and the president are more aligned, the third attorney said. “Ferguson is close enough with key White House people that he and the administration are basically on the same page,” they said.

At the DOJ, however, the third attorney described a “weird dynamic” where Slater was in charge in name only, with everything requiring approval from political appointees above her.

Currently, the DOJ has active second request investigations underway of oilfield services deal Valaris/Transocean and Mexican aircraft combination Volaris/VivaAerobus, according to public filings. This news service has reported that the DOJ is also investigating Subsea7/Saipem.

Meanwhile, the FTC’s current second request docket includes Qorvo/Skyworks, Penumbra/Boston Scientific, Axalta/AkzoNobel, SkyWater/IonQ, and Unifirst/Cintas. Since the start of the second Trump administration, the FTC has filed to block at least three deals and settled additional investigations with concessions and remedies.

Spokespeople for the DOJ and FTC did not respond to requests for comment.