The Justice Department will file a lawsuit seeking to block the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner, Bloomberg reported Monday afternoon.
The deal, announced last October, would create a media behemoth with assets including the Warner Bros. studio, CNN, HBO, the Turner networks, AT&T’s wireless business and DirecTV. However, President Donald Trump has taken aim at the mega-merger on the campaign trail and repeatedly branded CNN as “fake news.”
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that AT&T would have to sacrifice CNN to gain antitrust approval for the deal, which AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson declined he had proposed or had been asked to do.