Gail Slater, then-head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, was reviewing Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion bid to acquire rival Juniper when she got a phone call from one of the company’s outside lawyers.

“If you don’t approve this settlement, I will destroy you. I will destroy your job at the DOJ,” Mike Davis told her, according to a sworn deposition by her former deputy, Roger Alford, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. 

Slater relayed the call to Alford and told him it had badly shaken her, her former deputy testified. Davis had been Slater’s friend for years and recommended her to President Trump for the job. Now, he was advising HPE—and Slater and her team had proved resistant to the settlement terms he proposed.

The fallout was swift. Within months, two of Slater’s deputies—including Alford—were pushed out of the Justice Department. By February, Slater was gone, too. A senior White House official said Davis played a role in her ouster.

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