The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division will submit a statement of interest in an antitrust case alleging that big tech and big media organizations colluded to censor an organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a global partnership of 23 members featuring big tech organizations such as Meta, Google, and big media outlets such as the British Broadcasting Organization (BBC), the Associated Press (AP), the Thomson Reuters, and the Washington Post.
Together these big tech and big media organizations seek to combat “harmful disinformation in real time” that “could threaten the integrity of democracy, particularly during elections.”
“Partners alert each other to high risk disinformation so that content can be reviewed promptly by platforms, whilst publishers ensure they don’t unwittingly share dangerous falsehoods,” the Trusted News Initiative wrote.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the secretary of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, founded the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), as part of a mission to end “childhood health epidemics” by “eliminating toxic exposure.” The organization has four pillars as part of its mission: litigation, education, science, and advocacy.
The Children’s Health Defense in 2023 filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Trusted News Initiative, believing that the organizations and its affiliate members colluded to censor “online news.” The case remains at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Children’s Health Defense wrote:
Federal antitrust law prohibits firms from colluding to deny critical facilities or market access to rivals. Such agreements are called “group boycotts,” and they are per se illegal. The TNI is a massive group boycott. Since 2020, it has successfully denied critical market facilities—i.e., the world’s dominant social media platforms—to rival news publishers whose reporting competes with and challenges TNI orthodoxy. Under antitrust law, the victims of a group boycott—like the Plaintiffs in our case—are entitled to treble damages.
The Justice Department Antitrust Division, under Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, will file a statement of interest in the antitrust lawsuit against the Trusted News Initiative on Friday.
A statement of interest is a document submitted in ongoing court cases, usually in a federal court where the Justice Department expresses its views on the legal issues at play and serves as a way for the Justice Department to advocate for an interpretation of the law, typically in antitrust, civil rights, or other areas of federal law.
Slater, as well as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford, Deputy Assistant Attorneys General Mark Hamer, Dina Kallay, and William Rinner, as well as Policy Director David Lawrence, and Attorneys Daniel Haar and Allison Herzog, wrote in their statement of interest that “the United States has a particular interest in ensuring that free market competition “protect[s] individual liberty from the tyranny of coercive monopoly power.”
The Justice Department noted that the defendants in this case claim that “Suppressing competition in the marketplace of ideas . . . is not a cognizable antitrust injury.” However, the DOJ said in the statement of interest:
Individual liberty—and consumer welfare—benefit greatly from viewpoint competition in news markets and can suffer when that competition is reduced. News consumers desire and demand diverse perspectives. Americans therefore vitally depend on viewpoint competition in the marketplace of ideas to limit the abuse of market power and ensure the free flow of information in our democracy.
The Trump DOJ wrote:
The United States therefore files this statement to urge the Court to reject Defendants’ suggestion that the antitrust laws play no part in protecting viewpoint competition in news markets. Instead, controlling precedent shows that the Sherman Act protects all forms of competition, including competition in information quality. Existing doctrine under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, thus provides an appropriate legal framework to evaluate Plaintiffs’ claims.
The Justice Department has two main arguments as part of its statement of interest, which include:
- Harms to the competition provided by diverse rival sources in the news marketplace amounts to antitrust injuries that is protect by the Sherman Antitrust Act
- The Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits concerted action that unreasonably restrains trade reaches restrains on viewpoint competition
For its first argument, the Justice Department stated:
Thus, it is critical that the Sherman Act’s prohibitions apply equally when restraints of trade limit the type or quality of information that may compete in the marketplace for ideas. For nearly a century, the Supreme Court has recognized that the antitrust laws apply equally to news organizations as to any other type of commerce. “All are alike covered by the Sherman Act. The fact that the publisher handles news while others handle food does not, as we shall later point out, afford the publisher a peculiar constitutional sanctuary in which he can with impunity violate laws regulating his business practices.”Associated Press, 326 U.S. at 7 (rejecting “the argument that newspaper publishers charged with combining cooperatively to violate the Sherman Act are entitled to have a different and more favorable kind of trial procedure than all other persons covered by the Act”); see also Citizen Pub. Co. v. United States, 394 U.S. 131, 139 (1969) (similar); Times-Picayune Pub. Co. v. United States, 345 U.S. 594, 614 (1953).
…
Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater recently explained that “[t]oday’s online platforms control not just the prices of their services, but the flow of our nation’s commerce and communication [and] play a critical role in our digital public square.”[1] FTC Commissioner Mark Meador likewise elaborated on the threats to free speech posed by unchecked monopoly power in digital markets—“that a corporation cannot compel anything at the point of a gun is cold comfort,” he explained “when it can cut you off from commerce, speech, and even your bank account.”[2] The antitrust laws impose a critical check on the abuse of corporate power, and this court should reject Defendants’ novel attempt to immunize speech-related anticompetitive conduct. [Emphasis added]
For the second argument, Slater wrote:
Accordingly, when rival news publishers come together and conduct aspects of their news businesses jointly, that is concerted action subject to Section 1 scrutiny. Indeed, both Plaintiffs and Defendants accept some version of concerted activity. According to Plaintiffs, TNI is a joint effort by Defendants to stop “certain online news reporting” that “competes with, and contradicts, Defendants’ own reporting.” Pls.’ Suppl. Br. Opposing Defs.’ Rule 12(b)(6) Mot. to Dismiss at 1-2, ECF No. 96. Defendants, meanwhile, claim that they did no more than flag misinformation for each other, or at most “‘collectively decided what to count as misinformation.’” MTD at 1-2. Either way, Defendants have made joint decisions about certain aspects of their news businesses that are subject to Section 1 scrutiny.
Kallay said at a conference in late June that the Justice Department would be on the lookout for cases involving “product-fixing” and non-price restraints.
She referred to “product-feature fixing” or “product fixing” as any instance that involves rival firms working together and agreeing on what product features will or will not be made available to the market.
“Participants in such schemes may try to pass them off as a standard-development exercise — an activity that is procompetitive when done right. But these agreements are different from standards development in many respects,” she said.
“That’s something that we’re very concerned about. It’s something that we are watching closely. And I would say, just watch this space and don’t fix features of products,” Kallay continued.
Kim Mack Rosenberg, the CHD general counsel, said in a statement about the DOJ’s intent to file a statement of interest, that “The DOJ, which obviously has an interest in the enforcement of federal law, including antitrust law, is stepping in here, hopefully means this case will move forward.”
This is not the first move by the Justice Department and Slater against big tech. The Justice Department and Slater have argued before Judge Amit Mehta seeking remedies after the judge ruled that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly on the search market.
Slater has argued that the Trump administration’s “America First Antitrust” policy is about empowering “America’s forgotten men and women.”
“Worse still, Google has called the DOJ’s proposed remedies ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible.’ Not so. You know what is dangerous? The threat Google presents to our freedom of speech, to our freedom of thought, to free American digital markets. You know what is irresponsible? Leaving Google’s monopoly abuse unaddressed,” Slater said in her opening arguments during the Google search remedies trial.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
