Victoria Graham

White House Counsel Don McGahn’s July 17 call to Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over the decision to send the $3.9 billion merger between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media to an administrative law judge wasn’t improper, Chairman Pai said: “It was pretty unusual, and it was the first time we got a status inquiry of that kind.” Chairman Pai, when asked if McGahn’s call was improper, said, “Oh, not at all. It was just a big old status inquiry.”

Watch for network neutrality arguments in future antitrust analysis of mergers, competition lawyers said. The Justice Department’s high-profile attempt to block AT&T from buying Time Warner didn’t address the possibility that the AT&T customers could see slowed internet traffic for some content. But that kind of argument could come up one day. The DOJ has looked at past merger cases on the grounds of its impact on open internet access said Ketan Jhaveri, a former trial lawyer at the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.