The Justice Department ended its efforts to sink AT&T Inc.’s 2018 acquisition of entertainment company Time Warner, after a federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected the government’s bid to roll back the $80 billion-plus deal.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that the Justice Department was “unpersuasive” in seeking to overturn a decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon last June that allowed the deal.
Judge Leon concluded that an AT&T-Time Warner combination was unlikely to harm competition, and a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel on Tuesday said the trial court “did not abuse its discretion” in reaching that conclusion.
The ruling sweeps away the legal uncertainty that has hung over AT&T as it has moved forward with the Time Warner assets. Though the telecommunications giant beat the Justice Department in a six-week trial last year, it had agreed to temporary rules, set to expire at the end of February, that would have made it easier to unwind the merger had the government appeal been successful.
Shortly after the decision Tuesday, Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim called AT&T’s general counsel, David McAtee, to congratulate him on the victory and inform him that the government wouldn’t take the case any further, according to a person familiar with the exchange.
Tuesday’s loss leaves Trump administration antitrust enforcement at a crossroads, and it could make the department less eager to bring a similarly ambitious lawsuit in the near future. Before the AT&T litigation, the Justice Department had enjoyed a winning streak in merger cases that lasted more than a decade, with each win building momentum and precedent for the next one.
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