2026 - Volume 2 - Summer - Flipbook - Page 13
opponents of the Trump Administration, argued that the
merger was anticompetitive and that the settlement was
improperly obtained.
-Anti-Trust and M&A: Continued from page 11-
things, Judge Pitts reviewed documents and deposition
testimony from Alford; Mike Davis, Will Levi, and Arthur Schwartz (lawyers/lobbyists well-connected with the
Trump Administration); and Chad Mizelle, then-chief of
staff to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. He also reviewed documents and deposition testimony showing
that HPE-Juniper officials met with the CIA’s Director
and Deputy Director, the Undersecretary of War/Defense
(Policy), the Chief Information Officer of the National
Security Agency, and National Security Council staff, all
of whom supported the merger based on national security.
The state AGs and the Biden DOJ apparently did not
properly consider that HPE, Juniper, and other WLAN
companies all energetically compete on many factors
such as speed, reliability, sophistication, security, maintenance and installation costs, and customer support and
troubleshooting. Moreover, the network market consists
of many more components than Wi-Fi, and therefore both
domestic (e.g. Dell, Arista) and powerful – and potentially hostile – foreign (e.g. Huawei) WLAN companies
compete fiercely. Likewise, they apparently did not recognize that (1) HPE-Juniper merged to survive and create
a
