Trump Sells out on Ticketmaster/LiveNation lawsuit

No excuse for this. I've voted for him three times and would do so again but he was just plain wrong here. Wrong. Everyone on this board knows the crap this company pulls and how it should be broken up but go hire the right lawyers and Kellyanne Conway and presto, the swamp strikes again.

WSJ reported:

quote:

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The Justice Department was preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world’s largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called.

Settle it, the president told a senior DOJ official, the official later told associates.

The intervention was bizarre. The antitrust trial against Live Nation—which also owns Ticketmaster, a combination that draws relentless consumer criticism—was set to begin March 2, just days away. Trump had vowed to crack down on the industry just a year earlier when he signed an executive order targeting ticket-scalping and exploitative pricing in live entertainment. DOJ officials and the company had spent months exchanging settlement proposals but had little to show for it, and some in the government had been pushing to break up the giant.

White House involvement in law-enforcement matters, once taboo, is a regular feature of Trump’s second term. But many DOJ officials regarded the political interference in the Live Nation case as extreme even for an administration in which the president has openly pressured law-enforcement officials to pursue perceived enemies and pardoned allies.

Weeks before Trump’s call, Live Nation told DOJ officials that the company had brought in a fresh set of lawyers for settlement talks. They were from Sullivan & Cromwell, the New York-based firm that represents Trump in his personal legal troubles.

DOJ officials also learned that Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s private legal coordinator, had taken a keen interest in resolving the case, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials didn’t know whether he was working for Trump or Live Nation, or both.

After months of unproductive negotiations, Live Nation saw its fortunes change in roughly the span of a week.

On Friday, Feb. 27, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino met with Trump in the Oval Office. Trump had called the meeting to discuss how to improve bookings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to people familiar with the conversation. He also wanted to know why the company hadn’t reached a deal over its lawsuit, the people said.

The president’s directive to settle the case would follow the meeting.

On March 5, Rapino was back at the White House, meeting White House Counsel David Warrington and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to put the finishing touches on a deal. He was accompanied by Sullivan & Cromwell’s James McDonald, who had little antitrust experience but had been representing Trump in two New York appeals. Within months, Trump would nominate McDonald to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor.

The president stopped by to check on the negotiations. How is this not settled yet? asked Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

By the end of the meeting, it was. The two sides reached a deal that would allow the company to continue to control many of the best amphitheaters and keep Ticketmaster—its key subsidiary that the DOJ had vowed to force the company to sell less than two years earlier....

Most of the states involved, including those controlled by Republicans, viewed the settlement as so favorable to the company that they refused to join it and continued to trial. In April, a jury found Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market for major concerts in the U.S. The plaintiff states have asked the judge to break up the company....

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WSJ

Keep in mind they had TM/LN nailed dead to rights. They had concrete proof LN retaliated against venues such as Barclays for not using TM. They had records of employees bragging about gouging the customers.

Thankfully, most of the states stayed in and got a very strong verdict. Now the case moves into the damages phase.