The lawsuits are now coming from inside the building.
A Paramount shareholder filed suit Tuesday in Delaware Chancery Court against David Ellison, Larry Ellison, and Paramount’s entire board, alleging the father and son cut an illegal side deal with President Trump to secure approval of the $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover.
It’s the fourth legal action against the merger, landing one day after 12 states sued to block the deal, and the same day the Writers Guild filed its own challenge.
What The Suit Alleges
Per Variety, shareholder Paul Robbins, a Paramount investor since 2021, before the Skydance takeover, accuses the Ellisons of an “illegal bribery scheme.”
The complaint says they promised Trump up to $20 million in free advertising and effectively routed a $16 million payment to him through the 60 Minutes settlement to clear the Skydance deal.
Then, per the suit, they won the Warner Bros. bidding war over Netflix by promising sweeping changes at CNN, including firing anchors the President dislikes.
Afterward, the complaint says, the Ellisons proceeded to “remake CBS in the President’s image,” with CBS News ratings at a 25-year low and a talent exodus as the price.
The suit also flags the $24 billion in Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati sovereign wealth money behind the deal escaping CFIUS review, and calls the whole arrangement a liability waiting for a future administration to trigger.
Trump himself is not named as a defendant.
Worth noting: Robbins offers no firsthand accounts. The 59-page complaint is assembled from press reports, and the case is backed by two advocacy nonprofits, the Public Integrity Project and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
As we’ve covered, the opposition to this merger is organized and funded, and this is that machine in action.
Here’s the thing about the “secret” at the center of it: it was never a secret.
Trump publicly made clear he wanted Paramount to win and wanted a Netflix takeover stopped.
The suit largely repackages the public record as a Delaware fiduciary claim, which, if nothing else, confirms what we reported while it was happening.
Paramount’s Answer
Paramount denies it flat.
The company says no commitments about CNN’s future have been made “to any government body,” and it has denied any advertising side deal. That tracks with its scorched-earth response to the states’ antitrust suit on Monday.
The louder answer is the timeline.
Lead trial counsel Jeffrey Kessler said on CNBC the plan is unchanged: close this quarter, by the end of September, and if a court blocks it, “they would take this up to the Supreme Court if they had to.”
Paramount offered the states two paths, close after July 22, when it expects final clearances, or an early-September litigation schedule. The states rejected both, filing for a restraining order instead.
That TRO gets its hearing Friday before Judge P. Casey Pitts, with the states pushing for a ruling by July 22, the same day the European Commission decides, and the earliest date Paramount says it can close.
Why This Hits DC
And the CNN allegation should sound familiar.
Anchors out the moment the deal closes is the same post-close regime-change playbook our insiders described at DC Studios, where Gunn and Safran’s exits are pegged to the closing date.
Whether that’s a bribery scheme or just how the Ellisons do business is now Delaware’s question.
What’s not in question is where Ellison thinks power lives. He spent Monday night at dinner in Washington.
Four lawsuits, one hearing Friday, and July 22 circled on every calendar in Hollywood.
