Nine days after President Trump publicly accused major oil companies of gouging consumers at the pump, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission fired off a joint letter to every state attorney general in the country, urging them to open investigations into whether energy companies are violating antitrust and consumer protection laws by keeping gasoline prices artificially high.
The three-page letter, sent Friday by the DOJ's Antitrust Division and the FTC, marks the administration's most concrete step yet toward holding oil companies accountable for a gap between falling crude prices and stubbornly elevated pump prices. It also signals that the DOJ under Trump is willing to use its enforcement muscle on behalf of consumers, not just against political adversaries.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward framed the initiative in pocketbook terms. As the Washington Examiner reported, Woodward stated:
"Affordable energy is essential to a thriving American economy. The Antitrust Division is committed to working alongside state law enforcement partners to provide resources and support to protect consumers from anticompetitive behavior that raises the price of gas. The Antitrust Division will use all available tools to ensure that companies are held accountable for unlawfully manipulating the market."
That is not vague Washington language. "All available tools" includes both civil and criminal enforcement, a distinction worth noting.
The national average price of gasoline currently sits at roughly $3.82 per gallon, according to AAA Fuel Prices. That is down about 44 cents from approximately $4.26 a gallon just a month ago. But it remains well above the $3.16 average Americans were paying at this time last year.
The question the administration is pressing is straightforward: if crude oil prices have been, in Trump's words, "dropping like a rock," why hasn't the price at the pump dropped in proportion? It is the kind of question millions of Americans ask every time they fill up, and it rarely gets a satisfying answer from the industry.
Trump laid out his position bluntly on Truth Social on June 24:
"The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil. Those prices are dropping like a rock! In other words, customers are being 'gouged.' I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this."
The DOJ-FTC letter followed nine days later. Whatever one thinks of the mechanism, a presidential social media post directing law enforcement action, the administration moved with unusual speed.
The joint letter does not name specific oil companies. It does not announce charges. What it does is lay groundwork for a coordinated federal-state enforcement push. The agencies told state attorneys general that market volatility "does not suspend either the antitrust laws or state consumer protection laws," and that businesses may not use changing market conditions "as cover for anticompetitive practices, fraud, or any other lawlessness that harms Americans."
States with price-gouging statutes were specifically encouraged to determine whether enforcement actions are warranted under those laws. The letter also directed consumers to two reporting channels: the DOJ's Citizen Complaint Center and the FTC's fraud reporting portal.
Perhaps the sharpest tool in the letter is the spotlight it throws on the Antitrust Division's whistleblower rewards program. Informants who help uncover antitrust violations can collect between 15% and 30% of criminal fines collected in qualifying cases. The DOJ has already demonstrated it will pay out: earlier this year, the division awarded its first $1 million whistleblower payment to an individual who helped expose an online used-car price-fixing conspiracy.
That kind of incentive tends to concentrate the mind of anyone inside a company who knows where the bodies are buried.
The gas-price letter did not arrive in a vacuum. Earlier the same week, the DOJ filed a federal lawsuit against several of the nation's largest egg producers, including Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman's Egg Ranch, and Versova Holdings, alleging they conspired to manipulate industry price benchmarks and inflate wholesale egg prices through coordinated bidding strategies and private trades.
Federal prosecutors alleged the scheme contributed to record egg prices before those prices collapsed after the companies learned in 2025 that they were under investigation. The lawsuit seeks to bar future anticompetitive conduct and enforce proposed settlements requiring compliance programs and restrictions on communications with competitors.
The egg case matters here because it shows the DOJ is not simply issuing stern letters. It is filing suits, naming defendants, and seeking court-ordered remedies. The administration has been willing to bring fraud prosecutions against well-known organizations when the facts warrant it, and the egg lawsuit suggests the same posture extends to corporate price manipulation.
Whether the oil industry faces similar legal action remains to be seen. The joint letter explicitly states the agencies are "closely monitoring petroleum markets," but monitoring is not the same as charging. No specific oil companies have been named as subjects of a formal investigation, at least not publicly.
Critics of the administration have spent months arguing that Trump's DOJ functions primarily as a political instrument. The gas-price initiative complicates that narrative. Pursuing oil companies over consumer pricing is not a partisan exercise, it is a populist one, and it puts the administration on the side of every American who watches the numbers climb on the pump display.
That said, the DOJ under this administration has not been shy about using its authority across a wide range of fronts. The department recently opened a criminal perjury investigation into Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll, and California Governor Gavin Newsom has publicly claimed the DOJ is investigating him and his wife over a potential 2028 presidential bid.
Meanwhile, Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson have pressed the DOJ to challenge Anthony Fauci's Biden-era pardon in court, and the department has resisted a federal judge's demand for a sworn declaration regarding the status of an anti-weaponization fund. The breadth of activity suggests a DOJ that views its mandate expansively, for better or worse, depending on where you sit.
But the gas-price push is different in character. It targets corporate conduct, not political opponents. And it invites bipartisan state participation rather than concentrating power in Washington.
Several important questions remain unanswered. Has any state attorney general committed to acting on the DOJ-FTC letter? Which specific antitrust statutes does the letter cite? Has the DOJ opened a formal investigation into any named oil company, or is this still at the monitoring-and-encouragement stage?
And perhaps most importantly: what specific evidence prompted the DOJ and FTC to characterize current oil company pricing as potentially anticompetitive? A gap between crude prices and pump prices is suggestive, but it is not proof of collusion. Refining margins, distribution costs, state taxes, and seasonal demand all play a role. If the administration wants to bring cases, it will need more than a price chart and a Truth Social post.
The whistleblower program may be the administration's best bet for generating that evidence. Offering 15% to 30% of criminal fines to insiders who come forward is a proven method. It worked in the used-car case. It could work here, if there is something to find.
Americans paying $3.82 a gallon do not care about antitrust theory. They care about whether the price is fair. The DOJ and FTC have now told the oil industry, in writing, that federal and state enforcers are watching. Whether that surveillance produces charges, settlements, or simply lower prices through the pressure of scrutiny, the letter has put the industry on notice.
The egg producers learned what happens when the DOJ decides the prices do not add up. Oil executives would be wise to take note.
When the government starts advertising whistleblower payouts in the same letter where it warns your industry about price manipulation, the message is not subtle. It is an invitation, and someone, somewhere in the supply chain, is doing the math on what 15% of a criminal fine looks like.
