After US pushback, AT&T prepares to fight for Time Warner
NEW YORK — Seeing an attempt by to block its buyout out of Time Warner as a “radical” departure by the U.S. government, AT&T is preparing for a fight to see the $85 billion deal through.
One key asset owned by Time Warner, CNN, could create problems for the U.S. and President Donald Trump, whose very public spat with the news network has raised suspicions that he might have interfered with the department’s decision.
DOJ’s antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, insists that Trump did not tell him what to do. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday she wasn’t aware of any specific action related to the case taken by the White House.
In a press release, Delrahim said that a combined AT&T-Time Warner would “greatly harm American consumers” by hiking television bills and hampering innovation, particularly in online television service. The DOJ said AT&T would be able to charge rival distributors such as cable companies “hundreds of millions of dollars more per year” for Time Warner’s programming — payments that would ultimately get passed down to consumers through their cable bills.