Blue State AGs Side With Paramount, Scolding Sen. Cory Booker Over Settlement Opposition: “A Negotiated Agreement …Includes Compromises On Behalf Of All Of The Parties Involved”

Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery and a dozen blue states want Cory Booker to stay in his own lane when it comes to the settlement with state Attorneys General over the companies’ $111 billion mega-merger.

“The fact that a proposed consent decree does not contain every outcome that one party may have wanted in a multilateral negotiation does not make it substantively unfair,” states the just filed
court ordered Marguerite Sullivan-signed response to the New Jersey Senator’s September 24 missive against the September 21 unveiled deal between the Donald Trump friendlyTeam Ellison and the Rob Bonta-led AGs. “This is the very essence of a negotiated agreement that includes compromises on behalf of all of the parties involved.”

“The Decree reflects a reasonable compromise that addresses the competitive issues posed by the proposed merger in the markets alleged in the Complaint,” adds a 17-page filing Monday from California, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Nevada, Booker’s own New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington themselves declaring their deal is “fair, reasonable, equitable, and awful.”

In a classic example of the disunity Democrats are infamous for, the Blue dozen (at least four of whom had great apprehension about the settlement right up to the end) go on to say: “And the Decree’s enforcement provisions have teeth. Thus, …the Decree meets the applicable standards and it should be entered.”

Intentionally disregarding the anti-merger amicus briefs filed late last week by Block the Merger and the League of United Latin American Citizens, ParaBros’ lawyers and Democratic AGs from across the nation today formally responded to the September 24 letter from New Jersey’s senior Senator challenging the settlement David Ellison reached with antitrust suing blue state AGs last week. As of today, with that $7 million ticking fee to WBD shareholders kicking in October 1 and Ellison’s leaked threat to pull up HQ stakes outta the Golden State stilling stinging, the deal still sits in legal limbo. Which is where is will stay, as all concerned await a decision from an Oakland-based federal judge.

A state of affairs that puts a lot of Monday’s ParaBros lawyers letter in the flying the flag category.

“Twelve attorneys general, each accountable to their own electorate, judged this relief to be a fair compromise sufficient to resolve the claims they asserted in the complaint,” the 16-page document insists, playing to the notoriously self-sabotaging Democrats’ internal party politics.

The parties hoped to see U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin give the consent degree the green light last week. However, taking the place of a long scheduled virtual hearing on Paramount’s pre-settlement Hail Mary hope for a $1.88 billion bond to offset the “extraordinary losses” that could come out of waiting for aMarch 2027 trial, the September 24 sit-down went off the rails – at least from the POV of ParaBros and the pleading states, led by California Senior Assistant AG Paula Blizzard.

Coming for a variety of longtime critics of the merger, opposition rose and suspicion about the settlement served to pour gasoline on already flicking fire. “The Court should measure the proposed remedies against the relief the States originally sought: an injunction blocking the merger altogether,” Sen Booker (D-NJ) said in his six-page letter, requesting a number of measures including an independent review of the settlement. “The decree does not address the core of the case—that the merger is anticompetitive and will eliminate jobs.”

Contacted by Deadline today, Sen. Booker had no response to Para, WBD and the AGs’ response to his September 24 letter.

In their response Monday, the corporate lawyers took much the same tact and tone they brought to an initial reaction to Booker’s letter last week

“The adequacy of the decree must therefore be assessed against the risk of continued litigation—including the substantial prospect that Plaintiff States would have recovered nothing at all—rather than against an assumed permanent injunction that Plaintiff States did not obtain,” argued Monday the ParaBros attorneys from some of the nation’s top firms. Accordingly, the relief Plaintiff States secured is substantively reasonable.

Still, with the ambitious Bonta, CA Gov, Gavin Newsom, polling sagging L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and others stung by the blowback from the Dems’ base on their push for a settlement, there is no word yet when Judge Martinez-Olguin will sign off on the consent degree.