Recognizing Slade Bond and His Service to the House Judiciary Committee

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise along with Rep. David Cicilline, longtime Chair of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, to thank Slade Bond for his service to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Slade came to the Committee after serving as legislative counsel to Representative Hank Johnson. Prior to that, Slade was a law clerk for the Center for Democracy and Technology. Slade received his B.A. from Mary Washington College, his J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law, and his LL.M from the George Washington University Law School.

Slade joined the Committee in March 2014, serving as Democratic Counsel and then Chief Democratic Counsel for the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law. For the past 4 years, Slade has served as Chief Counsel for the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.

Throughout his service on the Committee, Slade has provided Members and staff with strategic advice and leadership on a range of legal and policy issues related to competition, bankruptcy, arbitration, commercial contracts, and federal agencies. Slade also has acted as a generous mentor and advisor for junior colleagues on the Committee, setting an example as a superlative staff member.

During his tenure as Chief Counsel for the Antitrust Subcommittee, Slade applied his keen intellect, conscientiousness, and creativity to advance the priorities of the Subcommittee. Slade supervised staff and led Member preparation for over two dozen hearings and markups, including a 29-hour markup that resulted in Committee passage of a suite of six bills to restore competition online.

Notable among his many accomplishments is his leadership of a historic, 16-month, top-to-bottom investigation of competition in digital markets. Slade assembled a dedicated team of counsels, technologists, fellows, special assistants, and clerks to examine the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google in the digital economy. He coordinated and supervised the team's review of nearly 1.3 million documents; interviews with more than 240 market participants, former employees of the investigated platforms, and other individuals; and holding of 7 hearings with testimony from 38 witnesses, including a hearing with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. In addition, Slade cowrote, and managed the drafting of, the culmination of this investigation: a 450-page report entitled ``Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets: Majority Staff Report and Recommendations,'' which the Committee adopted in April 2021 and published in June 2022.

Slade has developed a well-earned reputation for his excellent work with Members and staff from both parties, in both the House and the Senate, to shepherd important bills into law. These bills include legislation to reduce the cost of antitrust enforcement to taxpayers by modernizing merger filing fees, to protect our national security by requiring merging parties to disclose subsidies from foreign economic adversaries, to preserve the resources of state antitrust enforcers by exempting state enforcement of the federal antitrust laws from private multidistrict litigation, and to prohibit the enforceability of predispute arbitration agreements and non-disclosure agreements related to sexual-assault or sexual-harassment disputes.

The Committee, and Congress, will greatly miss Slade, but we look forward to working with him in his new role as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legislative Affairs.

We thank Slade for his tireless work ethic, acute attention to detail, impeccable work product, and enthusiasm for the mission of the Committee to ensure economic justice for American consumers, workers, and small businesses.

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