Ex-FCC General Counsel Sallet Joins Steptoe & Johnson

Former FCC general counsel and later deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's antitrust division, Jonathan Sallet has joined law firm Steptoe & Johnson's Washington office.

He will be a partner in, appropriately enough, the practice's antitrust and telecom groups.

Sallet was general counsel at the FCC under Democratic chairman Tom Wheeler from 2013 to 2016, which included coming up with the legal underpinnings, upheld by a federal appeals court twice, for the FCC's decision to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, a decision the current FCC chairman plans to reverse.

Steptoe's Pantelis Michalopoulos, who heads the telecom practice and joined Sallet in defending the Open Internet order in the D.C. circuit, said:  “Jon's dual expertise is a windfall for us. We would be delighted to partner with either the telecom aspect or the antitrust aspect of that expertise, and so we are doubly delighted to have both, fueled by Jon’s intellect.”

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.