DOJ Insider Blows the Whistle on Pay-to-Play Antitrust Corruption

[justaprogressive]

I met Roger Alford once, a few months ago at a conference. He’s a no-doubt conservative who served in both Trump administrations, yet he is cursed with having a sense of right and wrong. He was fired a few weeks ago for resisting pay-to-play corruption at the Justice Department, which offended his belief system. Unlike virtually everyone in the Republican Party since Inauguration Day, he’s willing to talk about it.

Alford, now a law professor at Notre Dame, delivered a speech at the Tech Policy Institute Aspen Forum on Monday, and simultaneously released an opinion piece in UnHerd, a well-known forum for populist conservatives. In both, he decried the subordination of the rule of law to a “rule of lobbyists,” confirming a degradation of antitrust under Trump that has been widely reported. In doing so, he made it more likely that the lobbyist cabal and their enablers in the Justice Department, both of whom he singled out by name, would face a judicial tribunal that can expose this broken process.

Here are the top takeaways from Alford’s revelations on Monday, and what it means for those in power and the future of antitrust enforcement:

Playing on betrayal. Some progressives may blanche at Alford’s praise for President Trump’s populist messaging, and insistence that it has been subverted by top DOJ officials selling out to lobbyists. He absolves Attorney General Pam Bondi and her number two Todd Blanche of blame as well.

Setting up a dichotomy between “genuine MAGA reformers and MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists” may not sit well. But the audience for these remarks is not anyone reading the Prospect. He is attempting to reach the president and his inner circle by playing on Trump’s demand for total loyalty.

https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-19-doj-insider-blows-whistle-pay-to-play-antitrust-corruption/]

[AZJonnie]

1. Pffft. Like Trump can be reached or goaded into action by anything like this

Pay To Play is his favorite fucking idea of all time, and Corruption is his middle name. If anything he'll see this as a reason to demand more money be given to himself personally by the lobbyists. Increase the ransom demands, as it were.

Alford must be reasonably smart to be a law professor at Notre Dame, but it seems like he's pretty damn clueless about what Trump's actual 'motives' are. In NO CASE is his motive EVER to do the morally correct thing, or even the MAGA-correct thing (unless it's going to be very public, which this will not be).

Trumps motive for EVERYTHING is ALWAYS Power, Money, and Glory for himself. Period. Like the wizened sage Epstein once asserted, Trump completely lacks a moral compass.

So, let us know how that works out for you, Alford!