KANTER ADVANCES

Jonathan Kanter, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust division, advanced with broad bipartisan support at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday.

The panel advanced Kanter through a voice vote, though Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked to be recorded as a vote against Kanter’s nomination.

If approved by a final Senate vote, Kanter will lead the DOJ division at a time when the federal government is cracking down on the market power of tech giants, including suing Google over allegations of illegally maintaining a monopoly over online searches.

Cornyn said he shares some of the concerns Kanter has raised about the tech industry, but he is concerned with what he described as Kanter’s approach to “use antitrust tools as a hammer to achieve political or social ends.”