The Trump administration sabotaged its own lawsuit against Ticketmaster/Livenation during trial after the company hired some Trumpsters. The Wall Street Journal reported August 23:
The Justice Department was preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world’s largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called.
Settle it, the president told a senior DOJ official, the official later told associates.
The intervention was bizarre. The antitrust trial against Live Nation—which also owns Ticketmaster, a combination that draws relentless consumer criticism—was set to begin March 2, just days away. Trump had vowed to crack down on the industry just a year earlier when he signed an executive order targeting ticket-scalping and exploitative pricing in live entertainment. DOJ officials and the company had spent months exchanging settlement proposals but had little to show for it, and some in the government had been pushing to break up the giant.
White House involvement in law-enforcement matters, once taboo, is a regular feature of Trump’s second term. But many DOJ officials regarded the political interference in the Live Nation case as extreme even for an administration in which the president has openly pressured law-enforcement officials to pursue perceived enemies and pardoned allies.
Weeks before Trump’s call, Live Nation told DOJ officials that the company had brought in a fresh set of lawyers for settlement talks. They were from Sullivan & Cromwell, the New York-based firm that represents Trump in his personal legal troubles.DOJ officials also learned that Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s private legal coordinator, had taken a keen interest in resolving the case, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials didn’t know whether he was working for Trump or Live Nation, or both.
After months of unproductive negotiations, Live Nation saw its fortunes change in roughly the span of a week.
On Friday, Feb. 27, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino met with Trump in the Oval Office. Trump had called the meeting to discuss how to improve bookings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to people familiar with the conversation. He also wanted to know why the company hadn’t reached a deal over its lawsuit, the people said.
The president’s directive to settle the case would follow the meeting.
On March 5, Rapino was back at the White House, meeting White House Counsel David Warrington and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to put the finishing touches on a deal. He was accompanied by Sullivan & Cromwell’s James McDonald, who had little antitrust experience but had been representing Trump in two New York appeals. Within months, Trump would nominate McDonald to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor.The president stopped by to check on the negotiations. How is this not settled yet? asked Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
By the end of the meeting, it was. The two sides reached a deal that would allow the company to continue to control many of the best amphitheaters and keep Ticketmaster—its key subsidiary that the DOJ had vowed to force the company to sell less than two years earlier....
Most of the states involved, including those controlled by Republicans, viewed the settlement as so favorable to the company that they refused to join it and continued to trial. In April, a jury found Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market for major concerts in the U.S. The plaintiff states have asked the judge to break up the company. Rest of article.
The story does not mention that Ticketmaster/Livenation also hired Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway.
The infuriating part is the Justice Department had Ticketmaster/Livenation nailed dead to rights. Evidence produced at trial showed how Livenation retailiated against venues such as Barclays for not using Ticketmaster. Don't use Ticketmaster to sell tickets, kiss the acts good bye. Records were produced of employees bragging about gouging the customers.
What, pray tell, are the terms of the settlement? Glad you asked. The terms of surrender for the Justice Department are:
* Ticketmaster must pay $280 million into a fund for damages sought by states. The company's annual net U.S. income is $496 million on revenues of over $20 billion. Woo-hoo.
* Ticketmaster must cap service fees at 15% at venues.
* Livenation must sell 13 amphitheaters. Big loss.
* Ticketmaster must stop threatening venues with losing access to acts if the venue uses other ticket providers.
* The term of the agreement is eight years.
The settlement does not break up the company as many hoped it would do.
Fortunately, most of the 40 plaintiff states did not join the settlement. However, six Red states jumped on the Trump Train, including Mississippi's own little Lynn Fitch.* Other red states such as Louisiana held the line and stayed in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit will enter the damages phase in February.
* Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota
Kingfish note: If there is one thing customers, artists, and venues agree on it is the Ticketmaster/Livenation monopoly is ruining the music industry as it has a stranglehold at all ends. Prices keep going up, artists don't get paid what they should be paid, venues can't sign acts or are forced to pay higher prices, and the service gets worse.
A shame the Mississippi Attorney General didn't look out for her citizens instead of going along to get along.
10 comments:
Fitch is a Zero.
But, but, but, he is building an amazing ball room that looks more like a giant data center. That should count for something.
Drain the swamp, starting with Trump and his cronies. Then go after the rest of the
Politicians on both sides of the aisle. I’m am equal opportunity hater of corruption
Please, for God's sake...tell me honestly that nobody read that in its entirety...or even half of it. Maybe a third?
Trump and Fitch are both duds. Just get the hell out of the way at this point. Trump is basically lame ducking til 2028.. Nothing is being accomplished that we voted for except a secure border. That is his ONLY real accomplishment. It feels like the biggest rug pull ever.
I'm getting tired of my friends who insist that Trump's grift is all some sort of performance designed to distract people from the 3-D chess game he's supposedly playing with Iran. I get that cognitive dissonance makes it hard for people to change their minds, but come on!
TDS alert. Call the medics
You & your cult voted for:
Tariffs (they’re taxes, you rube);
Bullying long-time NATO allies while licking the boots of Putin, Xi, Kim, and Muslim tyrants;
Measles;
$6 diesel & sky-high fertilizer prices for farmers;
The morning-after abortion pill;
The unconstitutional federal takeover of elections;
Bulldozing the White House;
The erasure of history at national parks;
Government taking a stake in 32 private companies (Republicans used to call this “socialism”)
and so much more.
But you’re a *true* conservative.
You’re all such a bunch of rubes.
American voters selling out our own country. YALL DID THIS! Get money out of politics ASAP. A constitutional amendment is desperately needed.
Sock puppet convention!
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