Trump Pushed For Live Nation Settlement After Rapino Oval Office Meeting: Report

The shock settlement that ended the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation came at the behest of the President Donald Trump himself in the wake of an Oval Office meeting with Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Sources told the Journal that Rapino met with the president Feb. 27, called in by Trump who wanted to improve bookings at the Kennedy Center, which had suffered after his takeover of the venue. During the meeting, Trump asked Rapino why the company had yet to settle its case. His call to DOJ officials, the sources said, came shortly thereafter. The settlement was announced in a New York City federal courtroom March 9, catching not only courtwatchers by surprised, but also Judge Arun Subramanian, the attorney representing the Justice Department and Live Nation’s in-house counsel.

In between the February meeting and the announcement, Rapino and other Live Nation officials were back at the White House, meeting with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Counsel David Warrington, along with James McDonald, at the time an attorney with Sullivan & Cromwell representing Trump in a personal capacity in two appeals and now the nominee for U.S. Attorney in New York’s Southern District.

Trump, the Journal reported, stopped by the meeting and asked why a deal hadn’t been reached.

The existence of the meetings themselves were already known due to a June 24 court filing. Required by the Nixon-era Tunney Act as part of the review of the settlement, the filing disclosed “all written or oral communications by, or on behalf of, Defendants with any officer or employee of the United States concerning or relevant to the Proposed Final Judgment.”

“In February 2026, Mr. Rapino discussed a variety of topics related to Live Nation’s business with President Donald J. Trump; the status of DOJ’s lawsuit against Defendants came up but no substantive terms regarding any potential settlement were discussed,” the filing reads in part.

The filing also disclosed that settlement discussion not only involved representatives of Department of Justice’s antitrust division, as would be expected, and the broader DOJ, as might be anticipated by the settlement of a high-profile case, those discussions eventually involved the Office of the White House Counsel, a highly unusual circumstance.

The Journal”s reporting, however, demonstrates an even more unusual circumstance: the involvement of the president himself in the settlement of a case that, while brought by the DOJ of his predecessor, had broad bipartisan support. The cross-party support has no starker demonstration then, when the DOJ settled, only a handful of states chose to sign on, with 33 others — including several with Republican attorneys-general — continuing to the trial they eventually won, with a jury finding in April that Live Nation operated as an illegal monopoly.

The Journal also reported that Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s long-time legal coordinator, “had taken a keen interest in resolving the case, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials didn’t know whether he was working for Trump or Live Nation, or both.”

A White House spokesperson told the Journal denied there was any confusion about Epshteyn’s role. A DOJ spokesperson said the case settled to provide quick relief to consumers rather than risking a legal battle that could ultimately be lost.

Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs and its top in-house lawyer, told the paper “Our critics are comparing this settlement to the irrational hope of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. For the actual claims in this case, the DOJ and settling states got as much or more as they could have expected to win in court. … The only reason we went above the Antitrust Division to senior DOJ leadership is because no one there would speak to us. When you’ve been unable to get a meeting for six months, you have every right to try something else.”

However, the Journal reported that the DOJ’s initial settlement offer did in fact seek the spinning out of Ticketmaster, which was a non-starter for Live Nation, which shortly thereafter hired Sullivan & Cromwell due to the firm’s close ties with the Justice Department.

Trump’s push for a settlement is even more shocking considering the April 2025 executive order “Combating Unfair Practices In The Live Entertainment Market.” Among the actions in that order — which also included a review of the ticketing industry, enforcement of the BOTS Act and actions directed to stymie scalpers — was a directive to ensure competition laws were being enforced against “venues, ticketing agents or combinations thereof,” language that seemed aimed squarely at Live Nation.