Shortly after Jonathan Kanter took over the Justice Department’s antitrust division in November 2021, the agency secured an additional $50 million to investigate monopolies, crack down on criminal cartels and block mergers.
To celebrate, Mr. Kanter bought a giant check prop, placed it outside his office, and wrote on the check’s memo line: “Break ‘Em Up.”
Mr. Kanter, 50, has pushed that philosophy ever since, becoming the chief architect of the most significant effort in decades to fight the concentration of power in corporate America. On Thursday, it took its biggest swing yet when the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. In the 88-page lawsuit, the government argued that Apple had violated antitrust laws with practices designed to keep its customers dependent on its iPhones and less likely to switch to competing devices.
That lawsuit combines two Justice Department cases against Google that allege the company illegally strengthened monopolies. Mr. Kanter’s staff has also challenged numerous corporate mergers, including suing to stop JetBlue Airways from buying Spirit Airlines.
“We want to help real people by making sure our antitrust laws work for workers, for consumers, for business people and to protect our democratic values,” Mr. Kanter said in an interview in January. He declined to comment on Google’s cases and other active litigation.
At a news conference about Apple’s lawsuit on Thursday, Mr. Kanter compared the action to previous Justice Department challenges to Standard Oil, AT&T and Microsoft. The lawsuit is intended to protect “the market for innovations that we cannot yet perceive,” he said.
Mr. Kanter and Lina Khan, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, have now taken action against four of the six largest public technology companies in a sweeping effort to rein in the industry’s power. The FTC has filed separate antitrust lawsuits against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, and Amazon.
But Mr. Kanter and Ms. Khan are on alert to see how far they can take their efforts. The November election could remove President Biden from the White House and take Mr. Kanter and Ms. Kahn with him.
More than a dozen people who know Mr. Kanter, including current and former Justice Department officials, described his rise over two decades. Some spoke anonymously to describe confidential government discussions and presentations.
Mr. Kanter grew up in the Queens, NY, apartment where his parents still live. After graduating from Forest Hills High School, he attended the State University of New York at Albany and then law school at Washington University in St. Louis.
“I grew up in a neighborhood with teachers and policemen and taxi drivers and shopkeepers and people who worked very hard,” he said, and he did so with the “belief that the American dream provided real openings and opportunities for a better life for future generations.”
He said he linked antitrust enforcement to those values ​​because “it’s about making sure those opportunities are available to everyone and that people can succeed on their own merits.”
After earning his law degree, Mr. Kanter worked at the FTC before joining major law firms including Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and Paul Weiss. At one point he represented Microsoft. When the company launched an attack on Google, which had eaten its lunch in online search, Mr. Kanter pitched around Washington that Google deserved additional scrutiny.
He later made similar arguments for other Google critics, including News Corp and Yelp, and said regulators should investigate other tech giants as well. At the same time, he championed corporate mergers in separate industries.
Mr. Kanter’s work against some of the tech giants won him fans among those who believed antitrust laws were an essential tool in making the economy fairer.
“Here was an insider who had also come to similar conclusions,” Ms. Kahn said in an interview in November.
After Mr. Biden confirmed his candidacy, Mr. Kanter, who often favors formal lapels and once wore a $34,500 A. Lange & Söhne dress watch in a photo shoot, debuted of the antitrust division to its staff, people with knowledge of the presentation said.
Mr. Kanter branded his initiatives with catchy code names. A plan for the agency to quickly review active legal cases has been dubbed Gen Z “Real Time AF,” short for real-time antitrust filings. He called a plan to investigate senior corporate executives the “Billionaire Accountability Project.”
Mr. Kanter told his team that, at any given time, he wanted the department to be able to handle 30 civil lawsuits and another 30 criminal cases. He called the scheme “30 for 30”.
The agency was already weak, and some staff felt Mr. Kanter was setting unreasonable goals, people with knowledge of the matter said.
His time in private practice also cast a shadow. Mr. Kanter initially did not work on lawsuits against Google because he had spent years representing its rivals. When he can’t deal with cases, including the challenge to JetBlue’s purchase of Spirit, he is guided by his chief deputy, Doha Mekki.
However, Mr. Kanter has been cautious about suing the tech giants.
As a Google antitrust case over online search went to trial last year, he told government lawyers to be more clear and prominent in their argument that the sheer scale of the company’s operations cemented its power and made it harder for rivals to to compete, two people with knowledge of the matter told me. That idea was central when the case was heard in a Washington courtroom last fall. (A decision is expected later this year.)
Mr. Kanter also oversaw the final months of the Justice Department’s investigation into Google’s control of online advertising technology. He argued to colleagues that the government should push for the lawsuit to be decided by a jury instead of a judge, which has been the norm in similar civil cases, a person familiar with the matter said. A jury trial is scheduled to begin in September.
Mr. Kanter’s work has been scrutinized by critics who question whether he and his compatriots are overstepping the bounds of antitrust law, hurting the economy.
William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the FTC, said Mr. Kanter had yet to secure a victory in the kind of sweeping antitrust lawsuit the agency was pursuing against Apple and Google.
“In some ways, he’s still looking for that most important trophy to put in the glass,” he said. “You win one of these monopoly cases, you can walk away for the rest of the decade.”
In the January interview, Mr. Kanter defended his push to change the way the agency operated. He said the world has changed radically in the last 30 years. People communicate using new media, get their information from different sources, and conduct commerce on emerging platforms.
“It is important that if we are going to have antitrust enforcement that is fit for purpose in a modern economy, we recognize these changes,” he said. “And then we adjust to make sure we enforce the letter of the antitrust law and applicable precedents. But we enforce the law in a way that reflects the realities of today’s economy.”
Tripp Mickle contributed reporting from San Francisco. Jack Begg contributed to the research.
