Author: rb809rb

UPDATED: California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that “we don’t have anything scheduled” with Paramount to negotiate a potential settlement of the antitrust challenge to the proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Bonta continued to lash out at the company, claiming that they were responsible for leaks of negotiation details in advance of a planned session on Monday. Late on Sunday, Bonta abruptly canceled the meeting.

“They wanted to have the settlement discussions, and we are happy to hear them out,” Bonta said. “We thought that they were reaching out to us in good faith and sincerely, and the unfortunately, they violated the rules of engagement, and that was not okay. They leaked lies to the press while we were in settlement negotiations, and that’s not okay. That’s not acceptable. That is amateur hour. That is playing games.”

Paramount issued a statement on Monday in which it said that it “has not been the source of the leaks of any of our confidential discussions with the AG’s office.”

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported, and confirmed by Deadline, that the AG’s asks included keeping the studios separate as well as unloading some cable networks. But there were earlier conversations between the parties. California Governor Gavin Newsom had indicated on Friday that there “are many meetings that are going on, and there’s a lot of conversation.”

Bonta said, “It is the alleged disclosure of the substance of the conversations of what occurred in those meetings that is the problem. Those are required under federal law to be confidential, and for good reason. So you can be candid. So you can be productive. So maybe you can even be creative in those discussions. If you’re having confidential settlement discussions, and as you’re having them, one of the parties is going out to the press and representing to the press what’s being said by you in those negotiations and lying about it, whether it’s true or whether they’re lying, neither is acceptable.”

A spokesperson for the attorney general later said that Paramount asked them to keep the contents of settlement negotiations confidential under Federal Evidence Code 408 but they believe “they turned around and disclosed it themselves.” The spokesperson said that they are not alleging that Paramount violated federal law at this time.

Bonta also did not blame Newsom for disclosing that there had been talks. Bonta said that “we saw sourced people who had knowledge about what was discussed in the room. It was only my office and Paramount. The governor does not have anything to do with the concern. Paramount has everything to do with this issue.”

Bonta said that Paramount “can also fix it, and if they want to fix it and stop playing games, we will be happy to meet.”

A Paramount spokesperson said on Monday, “We remain hopeful and stand ready to continue good faith discussions to resolve the Attorneys General suit and move forward with our plans for increased competition and increased output to the benefit of the talent and entertainment workers.”

Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general sued to block the merger last month. A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order that prevented Paramount from closing the transaction for four weeks, but the company later agreed not to complete the deal until June or until legal issues are resolved. The judge set a trial for next March.

Bonta also told reporters that “we’re winning this lawsuit.” He also contended that the judge, Araceli Martínez-Olguín, said that Paramount was “likely to lose the whole case….that we, the states, are likely to succeed on the merits and block the merger.” Paramount’s legal team, though, has claimed that they will prevail once the whole case is laid out in a trial that is expected to be heavy in discovery documents and competing expert witnesses.

With friends like Iowa Attorney General  Brenna Bird, does Paramount and David Ellison really need enemies?

In an op-ed penned for the conservative Daily Wire Tuesday, the Hawkeye State ally of Donald Trump is threatening to take California to the Supreme Court. Declaring that “California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator,” Bird wants to stop the antitrust lawsuit from the Golden State, New York and 10 other states against Paramount’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery.

“Just like California should keep its hands off America’s bacon, California needs to understand that it doesn’t get to decide what Americans can choose to watch or stream,” the reelection seeking Bird states of the state and its AG Rob Bonta.

“If California believes a transaction that 68 regulators approved is nevertheless illegal, it is free to make that argument,” she notes, lamenting the $7 million a day ticking fee and more Paramount will have to start paying WBD shareholders starting October 1. “But it should make it in the one court with the authority to bind all of us, and it should make it now, before the bill for the delay comes due,” Bird claps, leaving out any reference to the Empire State’s Letitia James and other AG.

Yet, for all her rallying to the ParaBros cause, as well as some variations on what Bonta and gang are actually alleging in the March 2, 2027 trial starting case before a federal judge in Oakland, Bird doesn’t seem to have actually filed anything with SCOTUS.

It also seems hard to see how even if Iowa did take California to the conservative majority Supreme Court, how they could get a hearing before next spring or even October, with the John Roberts-led high court not back in session until October 5.

However, let’s sidestep Bird getting a perch on SCOTUS’ fast tracked interim relief docket (AKA the emergency docket or shadow docket) for a second, and look at a possible route under the provisions of Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution. Even if the case fell within the “original jurisdiction” criteria and passed muster with the Justices, any ruling would likely still be drawn out — likely beyond the March 2027 trial already on the calendar. In the rare case SCOTUS picks up such a state to state battle, it would generally appoint a “special master’ to review the matter before getting directly on it.

All of which, like Paramount CEO Ellison accused Bonta in an August 4 NYT op-ed, makes Bird’s flag planter reek of politics.

Bird, who filed a brief in 2024 support of the former Apprentice host’s ultimately successful bid to gain significant immunity from prosecution for acts taken while POTUS, sidesteps most of the meat of the actual antitrust suit the 12 states and the WGA are pursuing. A suit that Bonta, in an August 10 guest column for Deadline, paints as “a straight up antitrust enforcement case. One that is very cut and dry.” Instead, Bird, while giving the DOJ the benefit of the doubt, moves to blast Bonta and colleagues as “more hostile to this pro-competition merger than Europe and China.”

The ‘To Save American Movies, I’m Taking California To The Supreme Court’ entitled piece in the Ben Shapiro-founded outlet insists a ParaBros combo is good for high streaming subscription paying Iowans, competition and the movie and TV businesses. “The merger could create a company to compete: an estimated $6 billion in savings to reinvest, and a public commitment to release at least 30 movies in theaters every year. More movies mean more entertainment — and more competition means lower prices,” Bird says.

There is no mention by Bird of the $80 billion debt load a ParaBros will carry, the ongoing blame game settlement talks (or lack thereof) skirmish, nor the $1.88 billion bond Paramount desires to offset the “extraordinary losses” the court challenge poses.

Bird also makes no mention of possible layoffs or other cuts from a Paramount and WBD melding. Cuts that every such M&A deal has seen. Cuts that the likes of the WGA SAG-AFTRA and theTeamsters warn of. Cut that reports in both late June and last week to the LA County Board of Supervisors warned could see thousands pink slipped, and cost the region billions in wage and hundreds of millions in tax revenue.

Touting a Hollywood that few who live here may recognize, the Iowa AG chooses echoes the findings of earlier this year from Trump’s DOJ approving the merger. To that, right now, she says “more movies are being made, and more workers are being hired.”

While seemingly concurrently stressing that a joint “Paramount+ and HBO Max together are smaller than Netflix, smaller than Disney and smaller than Amazon,” Bird also throws out there that “a successful Paramount-Warner Bros. merger would change that.” Later in the op-ed, the long time pol says: “That is the opposite of a monopoly problem.”

Singing the tunes of the growing MAGA chorus that seeks to turn Bonta into the new Nancy Pelosi punching bag, Bird asserts “California is just dreaming up something radical” to go to war with Trump and his admitted “good friends” David Ellison and his Oracle founding father Larry Ellison.

“California argues that the Department of Justice waved this through as a political favor to Paramount’s owners,” Bird wrote Tuesday in a smudging of what is actually in the July 13 filing by the colalition of blue states. Then someone should explain how the Department managed to get approval in China, Europe, Canada, and the other 60-plus jurisdictions. When regulators in 68 jurisdictions with different laws, different politics, and no stake whatsoever in American elections all reach the same conclusion, the outlier is not the consensus.”

Again, no filing seems to have occurred today so far at the Supreme Court from Iowa or Bird. Rob Bonta and Brenna Bird’s office do share the fact that neither of them responded to Deadline’s request for comment on the Iowa AG’s threat.