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> They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.

I wonder if this is just self-consciously a self-dealing thing explicitly designed to block off further investigations. Clear them, then they can't be properly investigated for that activity in the future.

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It doesn't really work that way, although I wouldn't rule out someone in the administration thinking it does. There's nothing an FTC investigator can do to "clear them" in a way that would prevent a future investigation for future instances of the same activity. An FTC decision not to bring a complaint or to request only trivial damages doesn't create a binding precedent for similar investigations later.

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