UPDATED, with White House comment: A group of Democratic lawmakers are pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for details on a meeting they had with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos last week, with the streaming giant pulling out of its bid for Warner Bros. shortly thereafter.
The lawmakers — Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-CA), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) — wrote in a letter that the meeting raised “suspicions that the Trump administration’s DOJ is making merger review decisions based on politicized favoritism rather than the law or the facts.”
Shortly after Sarandos met with Bondi and Wiles at the White House on Thursday, Netflix dropped its bid, ceding the battle for Warner Bros. to Paramount.
The lawmakers wrote, “From the beginning, President Trump reportedly favored Paramount’s bid to take over Warner Bros. As a result of its merger with media giant Skydance in 2025, Paramount is owned by Trump ally David Ellison. Ellison’s allies have reportedly suggested Paramount ‘is the only buyer who would pass muster with Trump administration regulators,’ and made ‘Trump’s implicit support for the deal … their number one talking point’ in negotiations.” They also noted that David Ellison attended Trump’s State of the Union address last week, as a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the president’s allies.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw over the weekend, Sarandos said that the DOJ meeting had been scheduled weeks ago, and that it was a “productive meeting” and “nothing out of the ordinary.” “The president stayed completely neutral on this,” Sarandos said. He said that Netflix’s decision to abandon its bid was due to Warner Bros. Discovery deeming Paramount’s offer as superior.
In their letter, the lawmakers, though, called out the reported participation of Bondi and Wiles in the Netflix meeting.
They wrote, “Your conversations with Mr. Sarandos taint the Warner Bros. bidding process by raising suspicions that the Trump administration’s DOJ is making merger review decisions based on politicized favoritism rather than the law or the facts.”
The Democrats also asked a series of questions to Wiles and Bondi, including of their discussions with Trump about the merger.
They wrote, “The American people deserve to know what Mr. Sarandos was seeking in your meetings, what you said to him, and how your discussions may have contributed to Netflix backing out of the bidding war while the Antitrust Division’s investigation was still pending.”
A White House official said, “President Trump has great relationships with both Netflix and Paramount. The White House and Trump administration remained totally neutral through the bidding process that was determined solely by the economics of both offers, as confirmed by Netflix’s CEO himself.”
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