Representatives Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), ranking member
of the House Oversight Committee, and Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia), ranking
member of the Government Operations Subcommittee, are seeking
to have the House Oversight Committee compel the Department of Justice to turn
over documents on White House contacts with DOJ regarding the AT&T/Time Warner
merger. The trial over the Justice Department’s challenge to the AT&T/Time
Warner merger is set to begin Monday,
March 19, 2018.
These leading Congressional Democrats
are seeking the same information that AT&T tried to obtain before the trial
regarding records of communications between the Justice Department and the
White House. AT&T’s motion was denied last
month by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who will preside over the upcoming trial.
Judge Leon said the companies did not make a credible showing that they were
singled out based on improper political considerations. Of course, Judge Leon’s ruling does not apply
to Congressional oversight investigations.
President Trump has made statements criticizing
the merger. Representatives Cummings and Connolly said in their letter that: "Our
concern relates not only to President Trump’s well-known animus against CNN —
Time Warner’s news organization — but also to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’
refusal to answer questions from Congress regarding his communications with the
White House about this matter.”
The latter refers to Attorney General Session’s
appearance before the House Judiciary
Committee on November 14, 2017, which was before the
Department of Justice went to court to try to block the proposed merger. In
that testimony, Attorney General Sessions refused to answer questions from
Congressional Democrats about whether anyone on behalf of the administration or
the Trump campaign, other than those in the DOJ or Federal Communications Commission,
had contacted him or his office regarding the merger review, and also about news
reports that the DOJ was seriously considering challenging the merger unless major
assets, such as DirecTV, CNN, and/or other Time Warner channels were spun off.
Congressional Democrats have
generally favored more antitrust challenges to mergers in the communications
sector. For example, Representative Cummings called
on the Federal Communications
Commission to block the merger of Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media, which is also being reviewed
by the Department of Justice. Thus, it appears that Representatives Cummings
and Connolly do not oppose the decision by the Department of Justice to
challenge the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, and instead are raising questions
about its motivation for doing so.
For a substantive analysis of the
merger and the context in which it should be reviewed, see my February 8, 2018 Perspectives
from FSF Scholars entitled “The Proper Context for Assessing the
AT&T/Time Warner Merger.”
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