Trump no longer seems to try to hide his corruption
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams
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| IDIOTS! Donald Trump NEVER pays contractors |
The merger deal is valued at over $30 billion and would mark
Alphabet’s largest acquisition to date, even as the company faces antitrust cases at
the state and federal level. Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport announced the Justice
Department’s decision on Wednesday at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal.
The DOJ approval came after Bloomberg reported in June that the Justice Department’s
antitrust arm was reviewing whether Alphabet’s acquisition of Wiz would
illegally undermine competition. The following month, the Justice
Department ousted two of its top antitrust officials amid
internal conflict over shady corporate settlement deals.
Lee Hepner, an antitrust attorney and senior legal counsel
for the American Economic Liberties Project, called the
DOJ’s clearing of Alphabet’s Wiz acquisition “the kind of blunt corruption that
most won’t notice.”
Hepner observed that news of the approval came shortly after
the White House released a list of individuals and corporations that
have pumped money into Trump’s gaudy ballroom project. Google—which also
donated to Trump’s inauguration—was one of the prominent names on the list,
alongside Amazon, Apple,
and other major corporations.
“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom
debacle out of a sense of civic pride,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the
consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said
earlier this week. “They have massive interests before the federal government
and they undoubtedly hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment
from, the Trump
administration.”
“Millions to fund Trump’s architectural whims are nothing
compared to the billions at stake in procurement, regulatory, and enforcement
decisions,” he added.
According
to a Public Citizen report published Monday, two-thirds of the 24
known corporate donors to Trump’s ballroom project—including Google—are
beneficiaries of recent government contracts.
