Jonathan Kanter
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”
CNN report on the Justice Department's investigation of the five pool networks, including comments from Jonathan Kanter, the Biden administration's assistant attorney general for antitrust.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
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.