White House rejects Dem request for AT&T merger docs

The White House is rejecting a request from top House Democrats for information that would shed light on whether President Trump tried to sway the Justice Department into opposing the AT&T-Time Warner merger.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust issues, in a letter dated Monday that the documents requested by the lawmakers were shielded under confidentiality protections afforded to the president and his advisers.

“As I have conveyed to the Committee before, we stand ready to work to accommodate all congressional committee requests for information related to a legitimate legislative purpose,” Cipollone wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Hill. “We cannot, however, provide the Committee with protected communications between the President and his most senior advisors that are at the very core of the Executive Branch’s confidentiality interests.”

The letter was first reported by Bloomberg.

Background on the request: Nadler and Cicilline made their request last month after The New Yorker published a story reporting that Trump had pressured Gary Cohn, his former top economic adviser, to press the Justice Department to intervene on the merger. The president was reportedly against the deal out of spite toward CNN, which is owned by Time Warner.

The two Democrats asked both the White House and the Justice Department for detailed records of discussions involving the $85 billion deal.