Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, Judge Casey Pitts from the Northern District of California granted a motion filed by 12 State Attorneys General and the Attorney General of Washington, D.C., to intervene in the Tunney Act oversight proceedings in the federal government’s challenge to the merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)-Juniper Networks (Juniper).

The hearing comes amid continued controversy over the DOJ’s eleventh-hour settlement of the $14 billion HPE-Juniper merger challenge earlier this summer — which caused Senators Warren, Booker, Klobuchar, and Blumenthal to call for a federal investigation in the settlement and the resignation of DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle. In September, the American Economic Liberties Project filed a brief with the court urging Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of CA to exercise his independent authority to investigate allegations of corruption and to reject the Justice Department’s approval of the massive network services merger.

“Not since the Nixon Administration has there been such an obvious case for public intervention to protect the public from corrupt meddling and backroom dealing,” said Lee Hepner, Senior Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “By allowing states to intervene, this ruling preserves a critical check on federal enforcement, which is especially important when the DOJ appears willing to abandon its duty to protect competition and consumers on behalf of oligarchs and lobbyists. With the states now at the table, the Court can meaningfully examine the irregularities that shaped this settlement and demand transparency about how the deal was reached.”

At the hearing, counsel for the States spoke to their obvious interest in “removing the taint of a corrupted process from this settlement.” The States’ counsel characterized the allegations of corruption underlying the DOJ’s settlement as “confirm[ing] every American’s worst fear of how government works.”

Following the Court’s granting of the States’ motion to intervene, the States must now decide whether to assume the federal government’s robust allegations of anti-competitive conduct set forth in their January Complaint. The Court has yet to determine whether its scrutiny of the proposed settlement will be confined to the sufficiency of the consent decree itself, in terms of addressing the anticompetitive concerns set forth in the Complaint, or whether it should further interrogate the process that resulted in the settlement – which includes allegations of corrupt meddling by the Trump Administration, the Justice Department’s front office, and a network of lobbyists.

“There is no way for the Court to scrutinize whether the settlement is in the public’s best interest without interrogating the allegedly corrupt process by which the settlement came about,” said Hepner. “The law requires the Court to consider the alternative remedies contemplated by the Justice Department and merging parties, and for the Justice Department to make a full, transparent disclosure of all contacts that contributed to the settlement.”

The January Complaint sought to block HPE’s acquisition of its direct competitor Juniper, alleging that the merger would substantially lessen competition in the market for enterprise-grade wireless local area network (“WLAN”) solutions. On June 27,  a mere two weeks before the merger challenge was set to go to trial, the DOJ and the merging parties announced a proposed settlement of the case to allow the deal to proceed, subject to a narrow divestiture of a lower-end segment of HPE’s product portfolio. Together with market leader Cisco Systems, Inc., the two brands now control 70% of the relevant market for “enterprise-grade WLAN solutions,” which provide wireless access points to businesses, universities, governments and other large institutions. Following 2004 amendments designed to strengthen the 1974 Tunney Act in the wake of the DC Circuit’s erosion of the law’s intent, the Court is now compelled to make a finding that the merger settlement is consistent with the “public interest.”

Behind the Scenes:

The behind-the-scenes dynamics of the HPE-Juniper saga were first reported by The Capitol Forum and Semafor when it was discovered that two top Antitrust Division officials, Roger Alford and Bill Rinner, were forced out due to the objections they raised to the settlement. Further reporting by outlets like UnHerd, BIG, and The American Prospect drew further attention to allegations of pay-to-play interference with the settlement, and how it was coordinated through “boozy backroom meetings” with MAGA-world lobbyists at the Article III project, who in turn exerted influence through then-DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle. At the 2025 Anti-Monopoly Summit, Senator Cory Booker called out Mizelle by name, and Alford himself shed additional light on the settlement and internal turmoil within the Division. Mizelle resigned from the DOJ last week. Senators Booker, Warren, Blumenthal, and Klobuchar also sent a letter in September sounding the alarm on Stanley Woodward’s nomination, following Mizelle’s resignation, with “allegations that Woodward played a role in undermining the DOJ Antitrust Division’s independence by reportedly cutting backroom deals with politically-connected lobbyists.”

Read Economic Liberties’ brief here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here. 

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.