Jonathan Kanter is an American antitrust lawyer who served as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division from November 2021 to December 2024. He is a Distinguished Teaching Professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. Earlier he was a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, practiced at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and founded the Kanter Law Group.
Case
The Justice Department is investigating whether ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC broke antitrust law by jointly suspending White House pool coverage after Trump barred CNN. Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance argues the networks were protesting, not restraining trade.
Role at the time: Former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, speaking to CNN
Statement summary
Jonathan Kanter, who led the Justice Department's Antitrust Division under President Biden, told CNN that the networks' action was nowhere near an antitrust violation and that any claim would run into Supreme Court precedent protecting civil rights-era boycotts as speech.
“This is not even in the same zip code of an antitrust violation”
The case asks whether the Justice Department is justified in investigating the television networks' White House press-pool boycott under antitrust law. Kanter tells CNN that the networks' action is "not even in the same zip code of an antitrust violation" and that any claim would run into Supreme Court precedent treating civil rights-era boycotts as protected speech. That rejects the legal basis for the investigation, so we labeled it Condemned. The closest competing label is Challenged the characterization, since he disputes describing the suspension as an antitrust matter; it loses because he argues that the conduct under investigation is protected speech.
Statement dates: October 10, 2026
Statement dates: October 10, 2026
Statement dates: October 10, 2026
Statement dates: October 10, 2026
