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
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.
When asked about the role of the White House in the Live Nation settlement at his July confirmation hearing for attorney general, Todd Blanche replied: “I wasn’t directly part of discussions, so I can’t speak to that. But I’m most certainly not saying they were not part of it.”
The March 5 agreement created confusion in the ongoing trial. Live Nation’s top in-house lawyer later said he didn’t know the deal had been signed when he met with the federal judge on the case on March 6. When the deal was announced on March 9, the DOJ’s co-lead lawyer in the trial said in court that he had only received the settlement that morning and hadn’t reviewed it yet.
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.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said the president “has not weaponized the Department of Justice against his political foes or used it to help his friends. The Department is focused on restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.” The White House referred questions about the Live Nation litigation and settlement to the Justice Department and said there is no confusion about Epshteyn’s role as Trump’s personal attorney.
A DOJ spokeswoman said the agency’s settlement with Live Nation prioritized quick benefits to consumers over a yearslong legal battle that the department risked losing, and that the terms enable competition and lower prices.
“Artists are now allowed to use other promoters at Live Nation venues. Fans benefit from service fee caps for concerts at amphitheaters and have new ways to obtain tickets on a variety of platforms,” the spokeswoman said.
McDonald declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Sullivan & Cromwell.
Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs and its top in-house lawyer, said, “Our critics are comparing this settlement to the irrational hope of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. For the actual claims in this case, the DOJ and settling states got as much or more as they could have expected to win in court.”
He added: “The only reason we went above the Antitrust Division to senior DOJ leadership is because no one there would speak to us. When you’ve been unable to get a meeting for six months, you have every right to try something else.”
MAGA antitrust push
In 2024, the DOJ launched its lawsuit against Live Nation, saying the company dominated all aspects of the concert business—including promotions, ticketing, venues, artist management and sponsorships—and used its power to stifle competition, driving prices and fees higher. “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said when the lawsuit was filed. Antitrust authorities had scrutinized Live Nation’s conduct for years following the 2010 merger that created the company.
Public frustration with it had boiled over in 2022, when Ticketmaster botched ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Glitches in the system kept fans waiting for hours in virtual queues only to have tickets disappear from their carts or the site crash. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia would ultimately join the DOJ’s lawsuit.
When Trump re-entered the White House in 2025, he appeared eager to take on the concert industry. In March 2025, he signed an executive order aimed at ending ticket-price gouging and called for stronger consumer protections. The move fit into MAGA’s support for aggressive antitrust enforcement as a means of curbing corporate power.
Vice President JD Vance had in his Senate days been a fervent antitrust advocate, particularly against Big Tech, and Trump tapped Gail Slater, a former Vance aide and vocal opponent of monopolies in tech, to lead the DOJ’s antitrust division.
But cracks quickly began to emerge, with Trump himself torn between his dealmaking and populist impulses, and advisers offering conflicting counsel.
Under Trump’s second term, the DOJ has moved sharply away from corporate enforcement. Trump allies and clients of his personal lawyers have received pardons or seen their cases dropped by the DOJ.
This month, the DOJ released a legal opinion saying that Trump wouldn’t have to turn over to lawmakers or the courts his communications about any official business with private advisers such as Epshteyn.
In addition to coordinating his private legal matters, Epshteyn advises the president, including on personnel, according to people familiar with the matter. Some senior DOJ officials in part owe their jobs, or terminations, to Epshteyn’s influence. They include Blanche, whom Epshteyn boosted to replace Bondi as attorney general.
When Slater interviewed for her job to lead the antitrust division during the transition, Epshteyn joined the group of advisers who talked to her, according to people familiar with the meeting. At one point, Trump turned to his lawyer and said of Slater, “I don’t know what you’re worried about, Boris. She seems great.” A White House official said Trump didn’t make the statement.
Connected lobbyists
Trump was also taking a special interest in the Kennedy Center, installing himself as chairman and naming Richard Grenell, a longtime ally, to be executive director. The two pushed for a programming overhaul, sending ticket sales plummeting. Some artists pulled out.
Trump vowed to attract top-tier talent. He told allies he wanted to see Live Nation involved in the arts center’s operations. Officials at the Kennedy Center had been discussing moving its ticketing system to Ticketmaster since 2024.
The Kennedy Center and Grenell didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal early this year that the center had seen enthusiasm for its programs, and Grenell said at the time that the Kennedy Center’s financial footing was stronger than the previous year.
Ticketmaster said no ticketing discussions with the Kennedy Center have involved Trump personally.
Live Nation, meanwhile, was spending months trying to get a meeting at the DOJ to discuss its case but couldn’t get in the door, according to people familiar with the matter. The company was told that DOJ officials were wary of taking a meeting because of Trump’s executive order on the concert industry, which they viewed as targeting Live Nation, one of the people said.
The company, which had been spending millions of dollars annually on Washington lobbyists, turned to some of the president’s longest-serving advisers for help, including Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s onetime campaign manager, and Mike Davis, a top Trump ally, according to people familiar with the matter. The company also added Grenell to its board in May 2025.
Davis, who took on a roster of clients facing antitrust scrutiny such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Compass, soon began clashing with DOJ antitrust officials on other cases, going over their heads when they wouldn’t approve his deals, the Journal previously reported.
In August 2025, one of the officials, who had left the department by then, gave a speech denouncing Davis and other lobbyists, accusing them of “trading on relationships with powerful people to reportedly earn million-dollar success fees by helping corporations undermine Trump’s antitrust agenda.”
The official, Roger Alford, singled out Live Nation as having paid “a bevy of cozy MAGA friends” to defend “their monopoly abuses.”
The Live Nation team sidelined Davis after he became a controversial figure, according to people familiar with the matter.
Settlement talks began soon afterward. In September, Conway and Grenell accompanied Live Nation executives to a meeting with Slater at the DOJ, where they outlined a settlement proposal. The company proposed time limits on exclusive ticketing contracts, offered to open up some amphitheaters to artists using other promoters and to place prohibitions on linking concerts to a venue’s use of Ticketmaster, and outlined a $280 million settlement fund to pay damages to state plaintiffs, depending on how many states signed on, a person familiar with the matter said.
The company urged officials to settle, reminding them that the case had initially been brought by the Biden administration and that Trump likes to make deals, according to people familiar with the talks.
Backing off Ticketmaster
DOJ lawyers considered Live Nation’s proposal to be a serious opening for negotiations, but they were far from ready to settle. In a draft response to Live Nation’s initial proposal, they demanded the company spin off Ticketmaster, according to people familiar with the matter. The ticketing business accounted for more than $3 billion in revenue in 2025.
Senior political appointees at DOJ, including Stanley Woodward, the No. 3 official, and Trent McCotter, then an aide to the deputy attorney general, were keeping close tabs on the case, the people said.
McCotter told the agency’s trial attorneys to remove the language from the draft proposal about divesting Ticketmaster. He and Woodward also relayed talking points that matched what Live Nation had already advanced, unsuccessfully, in court and to the DOJ, the people said.
When the DOJ sent its counterproposal in January, it made no mention of divesting Ticketmaster. Still, the company viewed it as a nonstarter, people familiar with the matter said. The proposal would require the company to open-source its ticketing software and to sell or give up control at about three-quarters of its amphitheaters.
Soon after, Live Nation’s Wall told the DOJ that the company had hired Sullivan & Cromwell to take over its settlement talks, the company said. Live Nation had hired the firm in December, in part because of its close ties to DOJ leadership, a person familiar with the matter said.
The change surprised DOJ trial lawyers, former agency officials said. McDonald, the new Sullivan & Cromwell lead attorney, wasn’t an antitrust specialist, though his two partners on the matter were, and Live Nation already had a deep bench of top flight lawyers from other firms. The working theory among DOJ staff was that Live Nation wanted a law firm with strong ties to Trump.
In February, the DOJ’s antitrust chief, Slater, left the agency. She had fallen out of favor with senior leaders who at times favored more lenient oversight of mergers, and she had lost Bondi’s confidence, the Journal previously reported.
She was replaced by Omeed Assefi, one of Slater’s deputies and a Trump administration veteran.
Settlement talks with Live Nation moved above the heads of the trial team, as Woodward, the DOJ’s No. 3 official, took over, working with Assefi.
Live Nation asked Assefi to delay the trial to allow the two sides to focus on negotiating. Assefi said no.
Then, at the end of February, Trump met with Rapino in the Oval Office. He asked whether the lawsuit had been resolved. The CEO told the president the company had been in settlement talks with the DOJ but they didn’t have a deal—and the trial was starting Monday, according to people familiar with the conversation and a court filing.
Roosevelt Room deal
Negotiations suddenly picked up speed. Jury selection in the case began March 2. Afterward, the parties met in the Manhattan chambers of U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who was overseeing the trial.
Wall, the Live Nation lawyer, shocked everyone in the room, including the judge, when he disclosed that the company and the federal government had all but reached a deal, according to people familiar with the meeting.
The judge turned to David Dahlquist, the DOJ’s co-lead trial attorney, who said that was news to him and that he’d call his boss, Assefi, in Washington, the people said.
Subramanian ordered the negotiators to New York to bring him up to speed.
Over the next several days, DOJ and Live Nation attorneys in court made their opening statements and began to question witnesses, while Sullivan & Cromwell’s McDonald hosted settlement talks at the firm’s Manhattan office. Two DOJ lawyers, Nicole Sarrine and Andrew Kline, neither of whom had negotiated an antitrust case of this size, represented the government in the talks.
Lawyers representing the states taking part in the lawsuit were initially locked out. They complained to the judge, and he ordered the DOJ and Live Nation to give them seats at the table.
On March 5, another White House meeting took place, this time in the Roosevelt Room.
Warrington, the White House counsel, played host. Bondi, Assefi and his chief of staff represented the DOJ. For Live Nation, Rapino, his chief financial officer, Joe Berchtold, and their Sullivan & Cromwell counsel, McDonald, were present. The states weren’t represented.
Typically, settlement talks take place at the DOJ with the agency’s antitrust officials, not at the White House with the attorney general and the White House lawyer.
Trump’s brief appearance during the talks came after he’d asked aides for days why the deal wasn’t already done, according to people familiar with the matter. He had been told that Live Nation offered a robust proposal, the people said.
The parties came to a deal that afternoon. The six-page term sheet, signed by Rapino and Assefi, said Live Nation would end 13 exclusive booking agreements at venues. It also required Ticketmaster provide venues that used its back-end services the option of selling tickets through a competitor, and it included a 15% cap on ancillary ticketing fees Live Nation can charge at its venues.
Live Nation also agreed to pay for the $280 million settlement fund for the states, with the total depending on how many joined the deal.
States carry on
In the late afternoon on the day of the Roosevelt Room meeting, the DOJ notified the plaintiff states of near-final terms and gave them a day to decide whether to join the deal. Bondi warned some GOP state officials that the deal was personal to Trump.
The response was icy; no state met the deadline. Still, Kline, the DOJ lawyer, announced the signed term sheet in court on March 9.
Judge Subramanian berated both sides for their failure to swiftly disclose the deal. “It shows absolute disrespect for the court, for the jury, for this entire process,” he said.
He demanded to know whether Wall had known there was an executed term sheet when he met with him on March 6.
Wall said that he had still thought it a work in progress then. “I frankly thought that there was still drafting and wordsmithing going on,” Wall told the judge. He added that the DOJ wanted to discuss the deal with the states before revealing it.
Dahlquist, one of the department’s lead lawyers, told Subramanian he had just received the settlement.
As their final act, the DOJ trial attorneys introduced into the record dozens of pages of internal Live Nation messages that showed a ticketing manager calling fans “so stupid” and declaring that the company was “robbing them blind baby.” The attorneys intended for the messages to become public even if the trial ended, a person familiar with the matter said.
Senior DOJ officials, meanwhile, continued to seek state support for the settlement.
Bondi called state officials to pressure them to sign on. Woodward leaned on members of the Republican Attorneys General Association during his scheduled appearance at one of the group’s conferences. Nebraska and South Dakota joined, and eventually Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi and Oklahoma also agreed to the terms.
The other 34 attorneys general continued the trial without the federal government.
In April, a group of senior DOJ trial attorneys resigned from the department over what they saw as political interference in the antitrust division’s affairs, according to people familiar with the matter.
The next week, the jury found that Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market for major concerts in the U.S.
In the next phase of proceedings, Subramanian must decide on a remedy for the company’s monopoly. The states in late May asked the judge to force Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster.
The judge must also decide whether to approve the DOJ’s settlement. More than 20 of the states in the lawsuit questioned the deal in a July letter to the judge, raising “significant concerns that the Settlement is not in the public interest.” They asked for the DOJ to disclose details of the settlement and how it was reached.
In May, Trump said he would distance himself from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ruled that his name must be removed from the building, although he has continued to try to influence the naming and other aspects of the center through its board. Ticketmaster said talks about taking over the center’s ticketing are on hold while the center is renovated.
The following month, Trump nominated McDonald—the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer who had represented Live Nation in the settlement—to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor. At the end of July, McDonald became one of the most powerful law-enforcement officials in the nation.
Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at rebecca.ballhaus@wsj.com, Joe Palazzolo at Joe.Palazzolo@wsj.com, Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com, Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com and Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com
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