DOJ Sues To Block AT&T/Time Warner Merger

• The Department of Justice on Monday filed suit in an attempt to block AT&T’s $85 billion bid for Time Warner, and in the words of The Washington Post, “setting the stage for one of the biggest antitrust cases to hit Washington in decades.” As the Post reports, “The move by the Justice Department’s antitrust division is unusual because it challenges a deal that would combine two different kinds of companies — a telecom with a media and entertainment company. Antitrust officials are relatively untested in the courts on opposing such deals and have rarely tried to squash them.

The administration’s lawsuit seeks to prevent a deal that would combine AT&T — one of the country’s largest providers of Internet and subscription television — with Time Warner’s enormous library of films, HBO, live TV programming and other content — like, say, CNN, for example. Some Democrats have expressed concern that antitrust officials could be seeking to block the deal because the Trump administration has been highly critical of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner — a charge that the department and the White House have denied.

AT&T says it is willing to go to court to unearth communications between White House and antitrust officials over the case. If such evidence is uncovered, analysts say, AT&T could argue that Trump abused his position as president to carry out a politically motivated attack against a private actor. “Today’s DOJ lawsuit is a radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent,” said David R. McAtee II, AT&T’s General Counsel. “Vertical mergers like this one are routinely approved because they benefit consumers without removing any competitor from the market. We see no legitimate reason for our merger to be treated differently.”