Hi, I'm Dan Pramath and welcome to Axiore's Recap, presented by Facebook. Today's Wednesday, June 24th. The Dow is down, Florida's COVID-19 rate is soaring, and we're focused on what Bill Barr did or didn't do to snuff out a whole bunch of marijuana mergers.

Earlier today, the House Judiciary Committee heard

from three career Department of Justice officials turned whistleblowers, all alleging that

Attorney General Barr abused his power. The one making the most headlines was involved in the

Roger Stone prosecution, but we're focused on a different whistleblower, a guy named

John Elias, who focuses on antitrust law. Elias alleges that Barr ordered the Department

of Justice's antitrust division to do deep investigations into 10 proposed mergers of marijuana

companies, even though none of those deals met the normal threshold to merit such

investigation. This certainly is not the first time that President Trump's DOJ has been accused of

letting bias drive antitrust decisions. But it is the first time that a DOJ attorney is the one

making the allegations and it could have consequences for other antitrust investigations in other industries

like big tech. So I spoke with one of the marijuana company CEOs cited by the whistleblower

and you'll hear that conversation a bit later. But before we get there, I would be remiss in not

noting that while today's hearing was going on, Bill Barr agreed to testify in front of that same committee.

That'll happen on July 28th. I caught up with Axios political reporter Elena Trin to ask her if

today's hearing will inform what Barr gets asked next month. It'll definitely inform the next

hearing. I think that the real impetus for Chairman Nadler asking for even saying

that he would subpoena Bill Barr if he didn't testify, that was prompted by the Berman firing.

But I do think that what's happening today about the G.O.J. Whistleblower testifying as well as

the former prosecutor for Roger Stone, all of those kind of play into what I think the committee is interested in looking at,

which is, is Bill Barr abusing his power as Attorney General,

and is he politicizing the Department of Justice?

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