Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser led a group of 20 Democratic state attorneys general in a letter blasting the “undue influence” that reportedly led to the U.S. Department of Justice’s approval of a $14 billion deal between IT giants Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks.

The DOJ’s Antitrust Division sued in January to block HPE’s proposed acquisition of Juniper Networks, which would lead to just two companies — HPE and Cisco Systems — controlling roughly 75 percent of the networking equipment market. But the Trump administration shifted course in June, agreeing to approve the deal in a settlement that included minor concessions from the companies, and a month later it fired two top antitrust officials who had worked on the case.

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Citing news reports that senior DOJ officials were “lobbied by individuals with close ties to the President’s administration,” the letter says that the federal judge hearing the case should subject the proposed settlement to further review under a 1974 law known as the Tunney Act.

“The U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division must operate under the rule of law and decide antitrust cases based on principles applied equally to all companies — regardless of their political ties,” Weiser said in a press release Friday. “The allegations made about this settlement, and the defects of this settlement on its face, call out for scrutiny. Thankfully, the Tunney Act was enacted for just this purpose and can achieve its goal of ensuring that sunlight provides ‘the best of disinfectants.’”

Weiser, a 2026 candidate for Colorado governor, wrote in the letter to Leslie Wulff, civil chief of the DOJ Antitrust Division’s San Francisco Office, that in light of the “explosive and dangerous accusations” of corruption in the deal’s approval, Colorado and other states are “prepared to participate in further proceedings” to block the merger.

“The Court should hold an evidentiary hearing and require discovery into the Settlement and the allegedly corrupt process that led to it,” the letter says. “And if, upon exposing the settlement to sunlight, the evidence establishes that it was the product of undue influence, then the Court should reject it as against the public interest.”

In a separate letter on Sept. 4 to Republican and Democratic members of Congress, Weiser also called for congressional scrutiny of the deal.

“I strongly urge your committees to hold hearings to examine this case and to call attention to the importance of protecting impartial and fair merger review by the Antitrust Division,” wrote Weiser. “Your committees’ oversight obligations can provide necessary scrutiny to ensure that the Antitrust Division is truly acting according to its statutory duties and in the public’s best interest — and particularly to shed light on the troubling allegations surrounding this merger review.”