Vanity Fair: Murdoch May Be Trying to Block AT&T Deal

Time Warner executives believe that media titan Rupert Murdoch is partly behind the Justice Department exerting pressure on AT&T to divest CNN as an end-around to deny the mega-merger, Vanity Fair reports.

Executives believe that Murdoch is personally pressuring President Donald Trump to block the merger, retaliation for Time Warner rejecting his offer to buy it in 2014.

"A direct competitor, who was spurned from buying us, perhaps is trying to influence the judicial process? That's corruption on top of corruption," one Time Warner executive told VF. "It's bad enough what the president has been doing."

A spokesperson for Murdoch told VF that the allegation is "laughable."

"If Trump is doing this to punish CNN we have nothing whatsoever to do with it," the spox told VF.

Though a source close to Murdoch told VF that "he'd work behind the scenes to stop it."

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