DEMS/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TECHNOLOGY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump reportedly tried to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger. Now Democrats on Capitol Hill want answers. In letters sent Thursday [3-7-19] to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Department of Justice antitrust chief Makan Delrahim, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. David Cicilline have requested ‘relevant documents and communications’ involving Trump and other administration officials like former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn. Earlier this week, the New Yorker reported that Trump instructed Cohn to file a lawsuit blocking the merger, an allegation that Nadler and Cicilline noted in their letters…The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department has long denied that political animus played a role in its decision to sue. AT&T declined to comment. Trump’s potential involvement in the lawsuit has been the subject of intense speculation from the moment the DOJ sued to block the $85 billion merger in the fall of 2017, given his well-known antipathy toward CNN, which was included in AT&T’s acquisition, and his own public opposition to the deal.”
–Tom Kludt, “House Democrats want records on Trump’s reported involvement in AT&T-Time Warner deal,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, March 7, 2019 7:09 pm