---
title: "William Baxter"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "William F. Baxter"
aliases: ["William Baxter","Assistant Attorney General Baxter"]
first_seen: "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["United States v. IBM","United States v. AT&T / Modification of Final Judgment","antitrust history","business/computing history origin myths"]
---


Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust (1981-83) who, within the same
January 1982 stretch, dismissed the 13-year *United States v. IBM* suit as
"without merit" and signed off on the AT&T divestiture settlement that
became the largest breakup under the Sherman Act. He matters to this vault
as the single point where its two largest 1970s-80s antitrust threads
meet — one dropped, one enforced — and as the namesake of an unresolved
sourcing question: whether the two events actually happened the same
calendar day, and whether the case-size figures attached to the IBM suit
(300+ lawyers, 2,500 depositions, 66 million pages) hold up against a
primary record.

## References
- [[claim-baxter-dismissed-ibm-case-same-day-att-breakup-finalized]]
- [[claim-att-case-dismissed-august-1982-not-january-complicates-same-day-narrative]]
- [[claim-time-1982-attributes-66-million-pages-to-ibm-spinoff-suits-not-doj-case]]
- [[claim-ibm-market-share-fell-during-antitrust-suit-price-strategy]]
- [[claim-cullinane-called-ibm-unbundling-software-industry-origin-myth]]
- Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-baxter-ibm-att-same-day.md, 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-24-did-baxter-dismiss-us-v-ibm-the-same.md