How do you buy off a multi-billionaire? Answer: you don’t, a lesson that one of the richest men in the world just learned — the hard way.
So says the Wall Street Journal, anyway. In an exclusive report on Mark Zuckerberg’s alleged strategy to avoid an antitrust trial for Meta, a story unfolds about straight-out influence peddling that flopped miserably. Rather than take an offer from the Federal Trade Commission to pay $30 billion in damages and accept a consent decree to unwind key acquisitions, Zuckerberg gave $1 million to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund and countered with $450 million to the FTC.
And he thought that would work:
Mark Zuckerberg called the head of the Federal Trade Commission in late March with an offer: Meta would pay $450 million to settle a long-running antitrust case that was about to go to trial.
The offer was far from the $30 billion…
