US: Democrats want Trump probed over AT&T-Time Warner

When Democrats take control of the US House of Representatives, they plan to investigate the Trump administration’s decision to try to block AT&T from acquiring Time Warner, and whether officials sought to punish Amazon.com by prodding the US Post Office to hike shipping prices for the world’s largest e-commerce company, a senior Democrat said on Sunday.

Speaking to online publication Axios, Representative Adam Schiff, who is expected to be the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Democrats will review if President Donald Trump was trying to punish the major firms with “instruments of state power to punish the press.”

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, while Time Warner’s holdings include CNN. Trump has lambasted both outlets frequently for their critical coverage of his administration.

“It is very squarely within our responsibility to find out,” Schiff told Axios in an interview that will aired Sunday, November 11, on HBO.

Mr. Schiff said Mr. Trump “was secretly meeting with the postmaster in an effort to browbeat the postmaster into raising postal rates on Amazon… This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post.”