How much corrupt behavior are we actually supposed to endure between corporations and the government that's supposed to police them? Not as a rhetorical question — as a literal one, because this year gave us a documented, dated, on-the-record answer key. A federal agency sued to stop a merger it said would hurt competition. Two politically connected lobbyists were paid $1 million each by the company being sued. The agency folded. The official who refused to fold got pushed out of her job. And a federal judge, looking directly at evidence that the company and the government had broken disclosure rules to get the deal done, approved it anyway.
This isn't speculation about what corporatocracy looks like in the abstract. These are the receipts.
What HPE and Juniper Actually Do
Neither of these companies is a household name, so start here. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the business-and-data-center half of the old Hewlett-Packard, spun off as a public company in 2015. It sells the infrastructure that runs corporate America's computing — servers, storage systems, and, through its Aruba Networks brand, the wireless network equipment that lets employees, students, and patients connect their laptops and phones inside offices, campuses, hospitals, and stadiums.
Juniper Networks is a networking equipment maker best known for the routers and switches that move data around the internet's backbone. In 2019, Juniper bought a company called Mist Systems and used it to build its own AI-driven enterprise WiFi business — the same category as HPE's Aruba, but from the industry's third-largest player rather than its second-largest.
Put plainly: HPE's Aruba and Juniper's Mist are direct competitors selling the same thing to the same customers — the wireless networks that businesses, schools, and hospitals depend on every day. A combined HPE-Juniper doesn't just get bigger. It takes the #2 and #3 sellers of enterprise WiFi in the country and merges them into one company, leaving Cisco, the #1 player, as basically the only remaining large rival. That's the entire competitive dynamic the Justice Department was suing to protect when this started.
What the DOJ Said Would Happen
On January 30, 2025, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division filed suit in federal court in Northern California to block HPE's proposed $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks. The complaint's own language was direct: combined, HPE and Cisco would control "well over 70 percent" of the U.S. enterprise wireless networking market, and the deal would "eliminate fierce head-to-head competition" specifically between the Aruba and Mist product lines. The DOJ laid out three distinct harms: higher prices from the loss of head-to-head competition, the loss of a company that had been aggressively undercutting rivals on price, and a higher risk that the remaining players would simply coordinate rather than compete. Fourteen foreign antitrust regulators had already cleared the deal. The DOJ's Antitrust Division, under the Trump administration, was the one holdout willing to sue.
The Million-Dollar Question
HPE didn't out-argue the government's case in court. It hired lobbyists instead. Mike Davis — a self-described "MAGA-aligned antitrust thought leader" who founded the Article III Project and the Internet Accountability Project — and Arthur Schwartz, a confidant of both Donald Trump Jr. and Vice President JD Vance, were each paid $1 million by HPE — described in later court disclosures as "million-dollar success fees" — to lobby the White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi's then-chief of staff Chad Mizelle, and the Attorney General's Counselor Stanley Woodward. A third operative, William Levi of the law firm Sidley Austin, was also retained by HPE. Their job wasn't to make a legal argument to career antitrust attorneys. It was to go over the Antitrust Division's head to senior political appointees at the DOJ.
It worked. Roger Alford, then the Antitrust Division's principal deputy assistant attorney general, later said publicly that he'd watched "corrupt lobbyists with no relevant expertise" override the professional staff's judgment. He was fired not long after saying so.
Isn't This Just Bribery?
It's a fair question, and the honest answer is: probably not, legally — and that gap is itself part of the story. Federal bribery law, under 18 U.S.C. § 201, requires proof of a specific quid pro quo: a defined thing of value exchanged for a defined official act. The Supreme Court's unanimous 2016 ruling in McDonnell v. United States narrowed that bar further, holding that "arranging a meeting, contacting another public official, or hosting an event" — exactly the kind of activity Davis and Schwartz were doing — doesn't count as an official act on its own. Bribery requires proving that a formal exercise of government power was explicitly traded for payment. Lobbying, even aggressive, well-funded, outcome-driven lobbying, remains legal as long as no one can produce a paper trail or recording of that specific exchange.
One detail is worth sitting with anyway: the $1 million payments to Davis and Schwartz were reportedly described in court disclosures as "success fees" — language that implies the payment was tied to the outcome, not just the effort. That specific structure, payment contingent on achieving a result rather than a flat fee for advocacy, is exactly the kind of arrangement most states have independently banned for lobbyists, precisely because courts and legislatures have long recognized that result-contingent pay creates the same pressure toward improper influence this piece has been documenting. Whether that kind of ban extends to this specific executive-branch influence campaign is a separate legal question this Dispatch isn't equipped to settle. But the terminology alone tells you what everyone involved understood the arrangement to be.
Overruled
Gail Slater, the Assistant Attorney General running the Antitrust Division — the official actually responsible for deciding whether to keep fighting this case — opposed settling. She was overruled by senior appointees above her at the DOJ. On June 28, 2025, with a bench trial scheduled to begin July 9, the government abruptly reversed course and settled. HPE agreed to sell off its global "Instant On" wireless business to a DOJ-approved buyer within 180 days and to auction a license to some of Juniper's Mist source code to competitors. In exchange, the merger — the one the DOJ had just told a federal court would hand two companies control of over 70% of the market — was allowed to proceed.
Slater didn't survive the fallout for long. She resigned from DOJ on February 12, 2026, in what multiple outlets reported was effectively a forced-out situation: resign or be fired. The trigger, ironically, wasn't even this case directly — it was a separate report on the same lobbyists pushing DOJ toward a similar settlement in an unrelated monopoly case against Ticketmaster. Mike Davis, who had called Slater "my good friend" and praised her a year earlier, was by then publicly demanding she be fired for standing in his way. When she left, he took a public victory lap. Live Nation's stock rose the same day — investors read her departure as one less obstacle to the Ticketmaster case going away too.
Congress Notices, Eventually
By September 2025, members of Congress from both chambers were formally asking questions. House Judiciary Committee Democrats Jamie Raskin and Jerry Nadler sent a letter to the DOJ, invoking the Tunney Act — the federal law requiring judicial review of antitrust settlements — and demanding answers on how the HPE-Juniper deal was reached. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats sent a separate letter directly to Attorney General Pam Bondi, describing what they characterized as the politicization of antitrust enforcement. A group of former DOJ antitrust professionals filed their own formal comment opposing the settlement on the merits.
The States Fight Back
With the federal government unwilling to keep fighting its own case, the fight shifted to the states. A coalition of twelve states — Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin — plus the District of Columbia (13 jurisdictions total) filed to intervene in October 2025, led in public statements by California's Rob Bonta and Oregon's Dan Rayfield, arguing the settlement was inadequate and the product of improper lobbying rather than legal judgment. Judge Casey Pitts allowed the coalition to depose lobbyists William Levi and Mike Davis and consultant Arthur Schwartz directly, putting all three under oath to answer questions about how much they were paid and what, exactly, they said to whom inside the government.
The Judge's Ruling
On August 12, 2026, U.S. District Judge Casey Pitts issued a 41-page ruling on the settlement, and what he actually found is more specific — and more damning — than a generic transparency violation. HPE had failed to disclose that its own chief legal officer, John Schultz, and lobbyist Arthur Schwartz had met with CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis and then-Defense Under Secretary Elbridge Colby. Under deposition, Schultz further testified that he and HPE CEO Antonio Neri had spoken with the National Security Agency's CIO, and that other HPE personnel had talked with individuals connected to the National Security Council. HPE argued none of that needed to be disclosed because those conversations weren't "about the settlement." Judge Pitts rejected that argument outright, ruling that the Tunney Act requires disclosure of any Executive Branch communication "concerning or relevant to" the settlement — not just conversations that used the word "settlement" out loud. Separately, the judge found DOJ leadership had withheld information about alternative remedies it had considered and rejected.
Despite those findings, Judge Pitts ruled that he lacked the authority under the Tunney Act to reject a settlement based solely on the government's internal process — he wrote that the proper venue for complaints about DOJ's conduct was "independent legal or political action," not his review of the settlement's terms. He credited the states directly for the only transparency that existed: "if the states had never stepped in, the public would never have known that DOJ leadership overrode the opinions of the Antitrust Division staff, nor that the U.S. considered and ultimately rejected alternative settlement proposals." He also noted the settlement would have "no preclusive effect" on any separate legal action the states might still choose to bring. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called it a "'limited' settlement approved under duress after the Trump Administration threatened to dismiss the lawsuit, leaving the public with no remedies at all," adding: "Stunningly, and amid allegations of backroom dealings, the court has also recognized that this settlement was not reached through a routine process." The merger closed anyway.
This Isn't a One-Off
The HPE-Juniper case isn't an isolated incident — it's a template. Journalist David Dayen, who has covered the Antitrust Division's collapse closely, has documented the same pattern of lobbyist-brokered settlements playing out across a string of other mergers under the same DOJ leadership: Amex Global Business Travel's acquisition of CWT Holdings, Compass's acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, and UnitedHealth's acquisition of Amedisys all reportedly followed a similar path, with the same small circle of politically connected lobbyists — Davis, Schwartz, Brian Ballard of Ballard Partners, and Kellyanne Conway among them — credited with the outcome. The Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopolization case was reported to be next in line for the same treatment.
What This Actually Answers
So, how much corrupt behavior do we have to endure between corporations and the government, supposed to check them? Based on this year alone, the honest answer is "however much it takes to close the deal" — because every safeguard that exists on paper got triggered here, and every single one of them failed to stop the outcome the lobbyists were paid for. The Antitrust Division did its job and sued. A senior official refused to fold and got pushed out for it. Congress asked formal questions. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia intervened, forced depositions, and secured a federal judge's order stating that the company and the government had broken the rules to get here. And the merger closed anyway, on schedule, because a judge decided the violation had been sufficiently "cured" by other people's whistleblowing.
Worth naming plainly: you probably hadn't heard about any of this until this Dispatch, and that's not because it stayed hidden. Bloomberg Law, MLex, The Capitol Forum, and The American Prospect covered nearly every beat of this story as it happened — the settlement, the whistleblower, the depositions, the ruling. None of it crossed over into outlets with the reach to put it in front of you. And the one legal mechanism built specifically to catch a settlement like this — the Tunney Act, the law that forced this case in front of a judge at all — is something most Americans have never heard of, not because it's unimportant, but because nobody's ever had a reason to explain it to you before now. That's worth its own Dispatch down the line.
corporatocracy (noun) — a system where the formal process for stopping corporate power exists, gets used exactly as designed by everyone involved, produces a written judicial finding that the rules were broken, and still ends with the company getting what it paid for.
curated control (noun) — a system where you're told the safeguard is a lawsuit, a Senate letter, a state attorney general, and a federal judge, and where all four of those things happened here and still weren't the actual decision-making mechanism. The actual mechanism was two men, each getting a million dollars.
Call to Action: What Needs to Happen Now
- Contact your member of Congress and both Texas senators. The specific ask: support closing the loophole that allows a Tunney Act violation to be "cured" after the fact, rather than voiding the settlement outright.
- Ask whoever you're voting for in the Senate race this November — Ken Paxton or James Talarico — whether they'll support legislation letting a future Congress unwind mergers approved through this kind of documented lobbying influence, as the American Economic Liberties Project has proposed.
- If you use enterprise WiFi products from Aruba, Mist, or Cisco at your workplace, watch closely for your next contract renewal. Reduced competition shows up in your IT department's budget before it shows up anywhere you can see directly.
- Follow the Live Nation-Ticketmaster case. Multiple reporters covering this story have said it's next in line for the same treatment.
Sources
U.S. Department of Justice. United States v. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Juniper Networks, Inc. — original complaint, filed January 30, 2025.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Truth on the Market, Legal Dive, American Bar Association. Coverage and analysis of the DOJ's January 2025 complaint and its market-concentration allegations.
Federal Register. United States v. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., et al.; Proposed Final Judgment and Competitive Impact Statement, July 10, 2025.
Federal Register. United States v. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Juniper Networks, Inc.; Response of the United States to Public Comments on the Proposed Final Judgments, November 19, 2025.
TechTarget, GovConWire, Seeking Alpha, Gibson Dunn. Coverage of the June 27, 2025 settlement terms, including the Instant On divestiture and Mist source code licensing requirements.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Letter to DOJ re: Tunney Act public comments on the HPE-Juniper settlement, September 8, 2025.
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. Letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi re: antitrust politicization, September 5, 2025.
U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division. Comment of Former DOJ Antitrust Professionals on the proposed HPE-Juniper final judgment.
The American Prospect (David Dayen). An Attempted Coup at the Antitrust Division, and Real Talk About Lobbyists Buying the Justice Department, February 16, 2026.
The American Prospect. DOJ Insider Blows the Whistle on Pay-to-Play Antitrust Corruption, August 19, 2025 — coverage of Roger Alford's public comments following his removal from DOJ.
Above the Law. Former MAGA Attorney Goes Scorched Earth With Corruption Allegations In Antitrust Division.
Jacobin. The Big Tech Lobby Has the DOJ in a Stranglehold.
Matt Stoller, BIG newsletter (thebignewsletter.com). Coverage of the HPE-Juniper settlement and the broader pattern of lobbyist-influenced antitrust decisions.
Washington Times, CBS News, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Free Press. Coverage of Gail Slater's February 12, 2026 resignation from DOJ's Antitrust Division.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats, Senate Democrats. Press releases on the inquiry into Slater's ouster and political interference in DOJ merger reviews.
Office of the California Attorney General (Rob Bonta). Statement on court approval of the DOJ's HPE-Juniper merger settlement.
Oregon Department of Justice (Attorney General Dan Rayfield). Statement urging the court to reject the settlement.
SDxCentral (Ben Wodecki). Judge rubber-stamps HPE-Juniper deal as vendor survives despite compliance failure findings, August 14, 2026 — detailed coverage of Judge Pitts's 41-page order, including the specific undisclosed contacts between HPE executives/lobbyists and the CIA, Defense Department, NSA, and National Security Council, and direct quotes from the ruling and from California AG Rob Bonta.
SDxCentral. HPE-Juniper deal back in court as MAGA lobbyists ordered to testify — coverage of the deposition order for Mike Davis, Arthur Schwartz, and William Levi.
Bloomberg Law. HPE Judge Allows Depositions of Company Lawyers, Advisers, February 3, 2026.
flyingpenguin. What a Million Dollars Now Buys at the DOJ: Mike Davis — coverage of the $1 million "success fee" payments and their lobbying targets (the White House, Chad Mizelle, Stanley Woodward).
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE.com newsroom). HPE and Juniper Networks reach settlement with U.S. Department of Justice, June 28, 2025 — company's own settlement announcement.
Duane Morris LLP. 13 State Attorneys General File Motion to Intervene in Federal Review of DOJ's Settlement Allowing $14 Billion Merger, October 2025 — confirms the specific 12 states plus DC composing the coalition.
Office of the California Attorney General (Rob Bonta). Statement on court approval of the DOJ's HPE-Juniper merger settlement, including direct quotes on the settlement being "approved under duress."
Bloomberg, MLex, The Malaysian Reserve, Free Malaysia Today, Macau Business, Concurrences. Coverage of the August 12, 2026 court approval of the HPE-Juniper settlement.