After a federal judge ruled that Meta was not an illegal monopolist in a strike against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued what was in part a typical statement of disappointment. The next part of the statement was anything but: a political attack on the judge himself.
“The table has always been stacked against us with Judge (James) Boasberg currently facing charges,” FTC spokesman Joe Simonson said in a statement after Boasberg released his decision in November. Simonson appears to be referring to articles filed by Republican lawmakers after Boasberg issued rulings that were unfavorable to GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration regarding the 2020 election and immigration policy scrutiny.
In late January, the FTC announced it would appeal Meta’s ruling. Legal experts say The Verge his decision is neither surprising nor unreasonable. But the attack on Boasberg, they say, casts a shadow over the decision — the motives behind what could be a typically routine move are less clear.
“You wonder how much of this is an element of exasperation or exasperation with Judge Boasberg himself, and how much of this is an institutional decision that ‘we’ll show you,'” says Bill Kovacic, former FTC chairman and current law professor at George Washington University. “This is a judge who has been heavily criticized by the White House. Is there an element of personal animosity directed at this judge?”
Kovačič and others argue that there is a sensitive legal argument against the way Boasberg reviewed FTC v. Metaalthough the agency has not yet specified its recall strategy. A lawsuit filed in 2020 alleges that Meta crushed the competition by acquiring upstart rivals Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively. But Boasberg soon said the FTC needed to prove that Meta maintained or threatened to maintain an illegal social media monopoly from the trial date of 2025. By that measure, he determined, the FTC’s case failed — in large part because of TikTok.
TikTok exploded in popularity during the pandemic, and both Meta and YouTube invested heavily in short video to compete. Its popularity—which, according to internal Met documents, deeply troubled Boasberg—convinced Boasberg that the FTC had exaggerated the Met’s dominance these days. In his ruling, Boasberg admitted that in response to Meta’s earlier attempts to get him to dismiss the case, his orders “didn’t even mention the word ‘TikTok.'” But at the time of his 2025 decision, “this app stands in the spotlight as Meta’s toughest opponent.”
Boasberg’s decision to judge Meta’s monopoly under the 2025 standards may become the FTC’s strongest basis to appeal its loss
Now, Boasberg’s decision to judge Meta’s monopoly under the standards until 2025 may become the FTC’s strongest basis to appeal its loss. Boasberg’s interpretation of the relevant time frame likely creates a “moving target,” says Vanderbilt law professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth. This could deter the agency from filing future enforcement actions if the market could change during the litigation. And an appeals court could — though it’s far from certain — decide it doesn’t make sense. “It just creates an additional risk of losing a lawsuit if the facts change under you,” he says.
Court of Appeals judges will not have to defer to Boasberg’s decision on the interpretation of the law, as they would with his findings of fact. They could determine that Boasberg should have considered the relevant time frame to be earlier, like when the lawsuit was filed, when TikTok was growing rapidly but was much smaller. Viewed through this lens, a court could determine that Meta was a monopolist during the relevant time period – although again, this is far from certain.
During the Biden administration, the FTC decided not to appeal another loss to Meta when it tried to challenge its proposed acquisition of VR startup Within. However, the text of the judgment contained useful legal interpretation for challenging future cases. Overall, the FTC has already invested far more time and resources in the social media monopolization case that spanned five years, two Trump administrations and a Biden administration, so it’s not entirely surprising that it hasn’t given up even now.
But like other actions during the second Trump administration, where previously independent agencies like the FTC have expressly aligned themselves with the White House, the attack on Boasberg’s record has raised a cloud of suspicion.
Boasberg became Trump’s target soon after the president’s second term began in 2025. After Boasberg blocked the administration’s deportation orders last year, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was a “far-left freak” and a “troublemaker and agitator.” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) last year introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg over his decisions to temporarily block the Trump administration from proceeding with a planned mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants and for what Gill says was his role in approving “frivolous gag orders” so that special counsel Jack Smith could gain access to the phone records of Republican lawmakers without their knowledge and overturn the results of his investigation in his investigation.20
“My sense is that the audience for that comment was the White House”
Kovacic says the appeals court is unlikely to find the personal attacks on Boasberg persuasive, but adds that he was probably not the intended recipient of the PR statement. “My sense is that the audience for that comment was the White House,” he says. The FTC and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta spokesman Chris Sgro said in a statement after the FTC announced its appeal that Boasberg’s decision was “correct and recognizes the fierce competition we face.”
There’s also the fact that proceeding with the appeal may preserve the administration’s leverage over the Meta. “One thing we know for sure about Trump is that he likes to influence powerful companies, especially media companies, that can sway public opinion, and that can be politically valuable for Trump,” says Allensworth. “So the case could continue as a source of leverage.” (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has visited Trump several times, and Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought.) Although the FTC was created as an agency independent of the executive branch, the current chairman has allied with the White House and called it the Trump-Vance FTC.
Given the real, if not certain, arguments in the FTC’s favor, Kovačic says he expects the appeal decision “to be mostly about the merits.” But he questions the FTC’s comments to Boasberg: “Why are you talking about other things?”