 Upon her nomination as the Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division by President Barack Obama, Varney was predicted to be a more aggressive enforcer of antitrust laws than her predecessors in the Bush administration.Her nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 20, 2009, by a vote of 87 to 1.Consistent with predictions, one of Varney's first acts as an Assistant Attorney General was to withdraw the Justice Department's 2008 guidelines for enforcement of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.