Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann was aghast over new reporting that President Donald Trump intervened directly to broker a sweetheart settlement for the Live Nation concert monopoly case.
Live Nation's anticompetitive practices, partly carried out through its subsidiary Ticketmaster, have unfairly cost millions of people extra to get tickets to live venues, and even some of Trump's own allies, like Kid Rock, have condemned the settlement as a disaster. The new reporting reveals the breakthrough happened when Live Nation retained a law firm Trump himself has used to get out of many legal snafus.
"I have seen this in other instances of this same law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, arranging, according to widespread reporting, the same kind of favorable deal and what to me reeks of pay-to-play allegations," Weissmann told MS NOW's Alicia Menendez on "Deadline: White House."
Weissmann added that this whole affair is "such a good example of what it means when we are no longer a rule of law country, where essentially bribes and pay to play is the kind of thing that would rule the day. And here people can see what it means to them individually. When individual actors, corporate actors, can get, you know, a favorable deal that other people wouldn't because of their relationship to the president, because of what they offer."
Indeed, he said, there was even a PowerPoint presentation drawn up by Sullivan and Cromwell "where they actually said that the company, if the case goes away, would be willing to invest $10 billion, with a B, in the United States."
"I mean, this is the kind of stuff that you see in Russia — in countries with no justice system," he exclaimed.