How Trump intervened in the DOJ case against Live Nation

Geoff Bennett:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting new details about President Trump's role in a major antitrust case against Live Nation, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster.

Justice correspondent Ali Rogin has more.

Ali Rogin:

The Department of Justice spent more than a decade building a case accusing Live Nation of illegally dominating the live event industry by thwarting competition to keep ticket prices high and restricting artists' access to live venues.

But according to a new Wall Street Journal investigation, the president urged senior officials at the DOJ to settle the case just days before it was set to go to trial. It came shortly after the president met with the company's CEO in the Oval Office. Attorneys general from 33 states and D.C. had joined the lawsuit, and, despite the settlement, most refused to sign on to it, saying the terms were too favorable.

In April, a jury in the state A.G.'s case found the company illegally monopolized the ticketing market.

For more, I'm joined by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Rebecca Ballhaus.

Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us.

What did you and your colleagues' reporting reveal about President Trump's involvement in this case?

Rebecca Ballhaus, The Wall Street Journal:

Yes, so, as you said, this was an incredibly unusual case.

It's a case that was first brought by the Biden administration. And when it's announced in 2024, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland says it's time to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. And when Trump comes into office at his first spring in March 2025, it looks like he's poised to kind of keep up that pressure on the industry.

He announces this executive order that's aimed at cracking down on the concert industry, specifically targeting ticket scalping and exploitative pricing. So it looks like the pressure's on and that he's not going to sort of reverse course on what the Biden administration has been doing.

And then we see the DOJ and Live Nation spend months and months exchanging settlements, negotiating. Live Nation for months can't even get in the door with the DOJ. They can't even get a meeting. And then, finally, their CEO sits down with Trump in the Oval Office just days before the trial is set to start.

And our reporting shows that, after that, Trump makes the call to the DOJ and says, settle this case. And by that -- the end of the day that Monday, the first day of the trial, Live Nation's lawyer tells the judge that they all but have a deal for a settlement, and that's hashed out in the next couple of days.

Ali Rogin:

Stunning 180-degree shift.

This is a playbook that other individuals and companies have followed when they are trying to appeal to President Trump directly when they're facing lawsuits. So, what sort of tactics did you find that Live Nation employed to curry the president's favor and get him to intervene in this way?

Rebecca Ballhaus:

Well, so I should say here, the meeting with the president in the Oval Office with the Live Nation CEO, Trump had actually called that meeting to discuss the Kennedy Center, which at that point was a real fixation of his. He wanted to improve bookings at the center and wanted Live Nation's help on how to do that.

And so he had asked the CEO to come and meet with him to discuss that, and then over the course of that meeting said something to the effect of, how's the case going? Has it been resolved yet? And we understand that the CEO told him, we have been having these talks with DOJ, but they failed, and the trial's starting Monday.

So that's one piece of it. They certainly were able to get on the president's radar, but it's not our reporting that they arranged this meeting for this express purpose.

What we do know that they did is that they had months before the trial started hired a set of lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell who were also representing the president in his two New York appeals. And so, in December of 2025, they had hired that law firm to take over their settlement talks with DOJ.

And one of the reasons why we understand they hired Sullivan & Cromwell is because they had these connections with DOJ leadership.

Ali Rogin:

And when you went to the Department of Justice for a response, what did they say, given how unusual this type of intervention from the commander in chief is?

Rebecca Ballhaus:

So the Justice Department didn't acknowledge the reporting in our story regarding the president's intervention in this case and his call to the DOJ.

What they did say is that they were able to get more from the company earlier than if they'd gone through this trial process. But what I did find really notable was Live Nation's response to our reporting. And what they said is that, if you can't get a meeting with the Antitrust Division, which they spent several months trying to do, you have every right to go over their head to senior DOJ leadership, as we saw they did in this case.

And so I think it's a really interesting example of a company kind of owning using some of those levers. While they're not acknowledging going to the president directly and saying that that was a part of it, they are saying that they appealed over the heads of the Antitrust Division, which is something that would have been very unusual in previous administrations.

Ali Rogin:

As we mentioned, many state attorneys general declined to sign on to this settlement because they thought Live Nation got off too easy. They moved forward with their own case. We know that a jury has decided against Live Nation.

But between that case moving forward and this settlement, where does that leave Live Nation today?

Rebecca Ballhaus:

Well, I think certainly more in limbo than it had hoped for when it reached this settlement with DOJ. I think the hope was certainly that states would sign on and that this would kind of end trial and end the case. That's not how it played out.

And instead now they're facing -- the judge is going to have to decide on the states' request to ask Live NATO ion to sell off Ticketmaster. So the remedies in that case have yet to be decided.

Ali Rogin:

Rebecca Ballhaus with The Wall Street Journal, thank you so much for joining us.

Rebecca Ballhaus:

Thanks for having me.

Geoff Bennett:

A Justice Department spokesperson told the "News Hour" today, in part: "'The Journal''s account of how this resolution came together is in material respects categorically false. The department stands behind this settlement and the many lawyers who negotiated it."