{"id":355791,"date":"2025-12-18T09:27:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T09:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355791\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T09:27:11","slug":"pam-bondi-should-recuse-herself-from-warner-bros-deal-review-senators-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355791\/","title":{"rendered":"Pam Bondi Should Recuse Herself From Warner Bros. Deal Review, Senators Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPam Bondi<\/a>, Trump\u2019s U.S. Attorney General, may have conflicts of interest in overseeing a review of a deal for Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> \u2014 and she should recuse herself from a review of any such transaction, two prominent Democratic senators said. <\/p>\n

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery has entered into an $83 billion agreement with Netflix, which would acquire Warner Bros.\u2019 studios and HBO Max. David Ellison\u2019s Paramount Skydance has mounted a hostile takeover bid, with what it claims are deal terms more favorable to shareholders. On Wednesday, WBD rejected Paramount\u2019s $30\/share bid as \u201cinferior\u201d to the Netflix deal<\/a> and recommended that shareholders reject the Paramount offer. Paramount is sticking with its offer in appealing directly to WBD shareholders.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the future of WBD\u2019s assets hang in the balance, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called for Bondi to recuse herself from the DOJ\u2019s review of any deal involving WBD because of \u201cpotential conflicts of interest related to her former employer, lobbying firm Ballard Partners.\u201d Prior to Trump appointing her attorney general, Bondi spent six years as a lobbyist at Ballard Partners, \u201ca favorite firm among companies with business before the Trump administration.\u201d Since Bondi\u2019s nomination as attorney general, Ballard has taken on both Netflix and Paramount Skydance as clients. According to the senators, Ballard was reportedly involved in the Paramount-Skydance merger earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn line with our anti-corruption oversight and legislative priorities, and given the cloud of corruption surrounding this merger and your former employer Ballard\u2019s potential role in this merger, we ask that you recuse yourself from the review of this purchase,\u201d Warren and Blumenthal wrote in a Sept. 17 letter send to Bondi. The full text of the letter is at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tA DOJ rep declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the senators, the DOJ has \u201cindicated that Bondi will lead the Trump administration\u2019s review of the merger, alongside DOJ Antitrust head Gail Slater.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two Democratic senators alleged that \u201cBallard is already enmeshed in the cloud of corruption surrounding the White House.\u201d They claim that reports \u201crevealed that Ballard lobbyists were instrumental in connecting their corporate clients with fundraisers for President Donald Trump\u2019s ballroom, and nearly half of the corporations known to be funding the ballroom \u2014 11 out of 26 publicly reported corporate donors \u2014 are Ballard\u2019s clients.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition, Warren and Blumenthal alleged, Ballard\u2019s involvement has previously raised \u201cquestions of improper influence in DOJ deal reviews.\u201d In July, the Justice Department<\/a> dropped its challenge to the $570 million merger between American Express Global Business Travel and CWT Holdings \u201cafter Amex GBT paid Ballard Partners to lobby the DOJ on antitrust matters,\u201d according to the senators.<\/p>\n

\n\tBondi signed an ethics agreement pledging not to participate \u201cin any particular matter involving specific parties\u201d in which she knows Ballard Partners \u201cis a party or represents a party\u201d for one year after confirmation, until Feb. 4, 2026. But after the February deadline, \u201cBondi\u2019s involvement in the Netflix-Paramount matter would raise the appearance of serious impropriety and threaten to violate her obligations as a public servant,\u201d according to Warren and Blumenthal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDOJ must guarantee that any review of a potential Warner Bros. transaction is decided based upon the law, not perverted by political favoritism and cronyism \u2014 particularly given the stakes of this case for consumers. Regardless of which of these two giant media conglomerates wins the bid for Warner Bros., a takeover will further consolidate the media market \u2014 risking higher prices and less variety for consumers,\u201d the senators wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n

\n\tPresident Donald Trump last week said he would be \u201cinvolved\u201d in a review of a Warner Bros. deal. He also opined that CNN should be sold as part of any deal for WBD<\/a> because \u201cI don\u2019t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don\u2019t think that should be allowed to continue,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI think CNN should be sold along with everything else.\u201d Those comments \u201c[raise] the specter of the President leveraging a possible merger to censor a prominent news network that he has openly criticized,\u201d according to the two senators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pam Bondi, Trump\u2019s U.S. Attorney General, may have conflicts of interest in overseeing a review of a deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,16675,3131,92,10343],"class_list":{"0":"post-355791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-justice-department","10":"tag-pam-bondi","11":"tag-tv","12":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}