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David Ellison, head of Paramount Skydance, has said that when his company completes its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, it will likely look to make about $6 billion in cuts to the combined company. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

June 5 (UPI) — The attorneys general of several states are preparing to file a lawsuit in the coming weeks to prevent the $111 billion merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.

As many as 10 states are involved in a California-led antitrust investigation of the merger, which would create an entertainment monolith comprised of two of the biggest major players in television, film and streaming globally, the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg and The Wrap reported.

Officials in the states have started working on the lawsuit and where to file it, the news organizations confirmed, and the litigation could potentially be filed before the end of June.

Although California Attorney General Rob Bonta told The Wrap in early April that “red flags are everywhere when you have a merger of this type,” his office did not confirm that the lawsuit was taking shape and could be filed soon.

“The Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers remains an active investigation, and we do have any updates to share at this time,” Bonta’s office told the news organizations in a statement.

The states that have been involved in Bonta’s investigation and may join the lawsuit, aside from California, are Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Paramount and Netflix competed for months to win the right to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, with Warner’s shareholders voting to approve selling the company to Paramount for $31 per share.

The merger has been controversial because Paramount Chairman David Ellison has said that after the company receives regulatory approval, he plans to make $6 billion in cuts between both companies.

Although Ellison said that the Paramount and Warner Bros. film studios will maintain their current pace of 15 theatrical releases per year, the deal has drawn sharp rebukes from across Hollywood and some parts of the federal government because the downsizing will most likely include job cuts.

May 27 (UPI) — Former President Joe Biden filed suit against the Department of Justice Tuesday to block the release of unredacted audio recordings and transcripts of his private conversations with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.

In 2024, the Heritage Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act to get Biden’s comments to Mark Zwonitzer while writing, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.

Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department had withheld the materials. But when Trump took over the presidency, “the Department has reversed that position,” the suit said.

In February, Biden’s attorney Amy Jeffress wrote, “without any formal explanation for its about-face, the Department notified President Biden of its intention to release the audio recordings and transcripts to the plaintiffs in the FOIA Action.”

On May 5, “the Office of the Deputy Attorney General informed President Biden, through counsel, that the Department had made a final decision to release the materials, with limited redactions, to the Heritage Plaintiffs and to Congress on June 15,” the lawsuit says.

“Every American, including a sitting or former vice president, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” Jeffress wrote in the lawsuit. “And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure.”

The documents were from records that then-special counsel Robert Hur used to write some parts of a 2023 report on Biden’s handling of classified documents that described him as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” Hur didn’t bring charges against Biden.

Redacted transcripts of those conversations have already been released to the public.

Rep. Jim Jordan, D-Ohio, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said he wanted the tapes released.

“I think it’s just important for the American people to know exactly where the President of the United States was… . (W)e’d like to see all that information, I think, to underscore what the Democrats were trying to hide just a few years ago,” CNN reported Jordan said.

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