US: Trump reportedly asked Gary Cohn to block AT&T-Time Warner merger

A new report about the close relationship between Fox News and President Donald Trump states the President personally asked a top White House aide to make sure the Justice Department (DOJ) stopped AT&T from purchasing Time Warner.

Ever since the DOJ sued in 2017 to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, theories and accusations of political animus has swirled around the antitrust case.

At the heart of the theories is Trump’s public dislike of CNN, which was a division of Time Warner. The company that has since been renamed WarnerMedia, which also includes networks such TNT and HBO, in addition to CNN.

In a new piece for the New Yorker, investigative journalist Jane Mayer reports that a few months before the DOJ filed its lawsuit, Trump pressured Gary Cohn, the former director of the National Economic Council, to tell the DOJ to block AT&T’s Time Warner deal.

According to Mayer’s source, Trump called Cohn and then Chief-of-Staff John Kelly into his office and said to Kelly, “I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked.”

After the two men walked out of the Oval Office meeting, Cohn told Kelly not to follow through with the president’s request, according to Mayer’s report.

Full Content: New Yorker

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