Giuliani says Trump did not intervene to nix AT&T-Time Warner merger

May 13, 2018 by admin
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Saturday’s comments appear to walk back Giuliani’s earlier claim in an interview with HuffPost that Trump had personally intervened to stop ATT’s attempt to merge with Time Warner.

“The president denied the merger. They didn’t get the result they wanted,” Giuliani said. He added, “Whatever lobbying was done didn’t reach the president.”

ATT’s top lobbyist Bob Quinn has said Cohen didn’t perform any lobbying work for them. The company announced on Friday that Quinn is retiring and source familiar with the situation told NBC News that Quinn’s retirement is “clearly in relation to this situation.”

The telecom giant’s CEO said hiring Cohen was “a big mistake,” according to a company memo sent on Friday.

The president has made several public comments about his desire to see the merger terminated, while the Justice Department has demanded a sale of CNN-unit Turner Broadcasting or ATT’s DirecTV as a condition of rubber-stamping the deal.

Trump has railed against the merger and against Time Warner’s CNN, saying the deal is “not good for the country.” In November, ATT tried to raise the question of Trump’s interference in the deal.

“There’s been a lot of reporting and speculation whether this is all about CNN, frankly I don’t know,” said ATT CEO Randall Stephenson. “But nobody should be surprised that the question keeps coming up because we’ve been witnessing such an abrupt change in the application of antitrust law here.”

Before taking up his role as the DOJ’s antitrust chief in 2017, Makan Delrahim told a Canadian outlet: “I don’t see this as a major antitrust problem.” But he seemingly changed his mind once on the job. The Justice Department cited antitrust concerns when it blocked the proposed $85 billion merger in November.

Federal judge Richard Leon is set to issue a decision on June 12 as to whether the merger can proceed. The case could influence the outcome of numerous other pending mergers in media and the telecom industry.

Dan Petrocelli, an ATT lawyer who is arguing the case against the Justice Department, had wanted the judge to allow him to probe communications between the White House and the Justice Department about the merger. The judge ruled against his request.