Sources: some staffers at DOJ believe the timeline favored by AG Barr for an antitrust lawsuit against Google is too aggressive, as the case is not yet ready
Brent Kendall / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
This report lands mid-arc in the DOJ's Google investigation. By late June, sources said the inquiry had become the department's top priority, spurred by AG Barr's personal interest and a swift-moving case. Two weeks after this story, the DOJ was reportedly set to file within the month — with Barr having overruled career lawyers who asked for more time — and by late September it was briefing state attorneys general ahead of a possible filing.
The friction here is between political leadership's clock and the career staff's readiness assessment, and the coverage suggests the staff's caution had consequences: the eventual suit faced a judge's projection that trial wouldn't begin until late 2023, and critics framed the rushed filing as election-season politics rather than monopoly concern.
First-order effects
- Career DOJ antitrust staff are in open disagreement with AG Barr over filing readiness, meaning the department's own line attorneys believe the Google case would go to court under-prepared if filed on his schedule.
Second-order effects
- State attorneys general being briefed on the filing plans must decide whether to join or run parallel cases of their own, and a suit perceived as politically timed invites exactly the cronyism-and-election-politics critique that followed the actual filing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, politically driven deadlines compress case preparation at the front end while the judicial process stretches it back out — the trial date slipped toward late 2023, and a year later the DOJ was still delaying decisions on suing Apple or filing a fresh Google case amid budget constraints.
The trend: US antitrust action against Big Tech is increasingly paced by leadership timelines at the top of the DOJ rather than by career staff readiness, with the courts absorbing the resulting schedule risk.