Kaitlan Collins Puts Rob Bonta on the Spot Over CNN’s Role in Paramount Merger Fight

Kaitlan Collins asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta point-blank Monday whether concerns about CNN were a driving factor in his antitrust suit challenging the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. His answer? He called that claim a “lie that’s been advanced” by Paramount.

“Obviously, we’re approaching this interview as … I’m a reporter, and we’re asking you questions about this,” Collins said to Bonta during Monday’s “The Source.” “Some people might be watching and say, ‘How much of this has to do with the channel we’re watching right now?’ With CNN itself. What would you say to that?”

After a laugh, the California AG noted, “Zero. This is about three different markets and three different potential remedies for those markets. That is another, unfortunately, lie that’s been advanced by the Paramount side.”

“They put out and planted in stories this idea. This false idea,” he continued. “That if CNN were divested, were spun off, that would be enough to resolve this case. That wasn’t true yesterday, that’s not true today, that will never be true. It’s just not true.”

As Bonta went on, he accused the Paramount camp of “spending a lot of time talking about things that are irrelevant to the case.”

“The streaming market, which is not part of our case. CNN, which is not a focus of our case,” Bonta noted. “They’re talking about what foreign regulators have done – no relationship to this case. Not relevant to this case. They’re trying to claim they are going to leave California. They’re trying to claim they are owed a $1.8 billion bond. They’re trying to manufacture and invent leverage in this case by talking about things irrelevant to this case.”

Before concluding his conversation with Collins, he issued a message to Paramount, advising the company “to focus on the case.”

“Our complaint is straightforward. We set forth our concerns,” he said. “If they want to try to resolve those concerns with structural remedies we’re happy to hear what they have to say in good faith. There’s no three dimensional chess here. It’s just a straight up antitrust case.”

Watch his comments below.

A representative for Paramount did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment. However, in a statement earlier on Monday, Paramount denied leaking the meeting and said it shares Bonta’s concerns about the “public discussions and misreporting that has surrounded this deal” and was standing “ready to continue good faith discussions.”

Bonta’s commentary on CNN echoed similar remarks he made earlier to TheWrap, where he said he was open to coming to the negotiating table as early as this week, but only if Paramount Skydance agreed to “stop leaking and stop misrepresenting through their leaks.”

“They’ve got to figure out where the leaks are and shut them down,” he told TheWrap’s Lucas Manfredi and Sharon Waxman after canceling the planned settlement talks with Paramount. “And once they figure that out, we’ll be happy to talk with them. I don’t know how long it’ll take them to figure it out and to fix it, but when they do, we’re ready.”

Elsewhere in TheWrap’s interview with Bonta, he expressed that someone else would have to own a “significant” portion of the 50 basic cable channels that would be included under a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. He stopped short of naming CNN, however.

For our full conversation with Bonta, click here.

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