- Trump announced Rep. Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general.
- Gaetz has criticized Big Tech for censoring conservatives and supports antitrust enforcement.
- Both the Justice Department and the FTC enforce antitrust laws that impact large tech companies.
President-elect Donald Trump named Rep. Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general, an appointment which, if approved by the Senate, would give the Florida Republican sweeping legal power and the opportunity to act on his longstanding complaints against Big Tech.
Gaetz has frequently railed against Big Tech, accusing Silicon Valley firms of censoring conservatives, and in recent years has emerged as a fierce advocate for antitrust enforcement, particularly against companies like Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet.
"The internet's hall monitors out in Silicon Valley, they think they can suppress us, discourage us. Maybe if you're just a little less patriotic. Maybe if you just conform to their way of thinking a little more, then you'll be allowed to participate in the digital world," Gaetz said during a 2021 appearance shortly after Trump had been banned from social media platforms following the January 6 insurrection.
"Well, you know what? Silicon Valley can't cancel this movement, or this rally, or this congressman," he told the audience. "We have a Second Amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it."
Still, it's unclear how much his appointment to attorney general, if approved by the Senate, would impact Silicon Valley.
A representative for the congressman did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Both the Justice Department and the FTC are responsible for enforcing antitrust laws in the US. Current Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who Trump may end up replacing, has been aggressive at going after Big Tech companies. Khan has worked to stifle billions of dollars worth of deals over anti-competitive concerns, and the FTC has brought lawsuits against Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft, among others.
That work puts her somewhat in alignment with Gaetz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, who has praised her work. Gaetz told The Wall Street Journal in March that he hopes "whoever is the next FTC chair would continue many of the cases that Chair Khan has brought against predatory businesses."
So although Khan could be departing, it's possible the federal government's antitrust policy towards major tech companies does not drastically change, according to Mark A. Kasten, an attorney at Buchanan Ingersoll and Rooney focusing on white collar criminal defense, compliance, and investigations.
It could also depend on who Trump picks to chair the FTC. Though he is expected to fire Khan, it's unclear who he would tap to lead the agency instead.
"Ultimately, we still expect to see a meaningful uptick in M&A activity," Isaac Boltansky, BTIG's director of policy research, told Barron's after Gaetz was nominated, referring to mergers an acquisitions.
"But the hurdles for Big Tech could remain elevated," he added.
Kasten, who has defended clients who were under investigation by the Justice Department, also noted that Gaetz voted against the TikTok ban passed in April. The bill, aimed at beefing up national security against China, requires the app's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its US assets by January or be banned from app stores.
"While that law passed, and requires the platform to be sold to a non-Chinese company in January, it is easy to see a world in which an Attorney General Gaetz doesn't enforce it," Kasten told BI in an email.
Following the vote, Gaetz said he believed banning TikTok was "the right idea" but that he took issue with the "overly broad" and "rushed" legislation.
"This is no way to run a railroad (or the internet)," Gaetz posted on X.
Several of the biggest tech companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon, are already contending with antitrust cases filed over the last several years.
George Hay, an antitrust expert and law professor at Cornell University, previously told BI that incoming presidents generally don't alter current cases.
"It's very rare that, at the presidential level, there's any attempt to influence the course of cases which have already been filed. Those have a life of their own," Hay said. "They depend on the judge, the courts, the lawyers who carry on a case. It's extraordinarily unusual for the administration to become at all active."