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PART I: Larry Ellison’s own team described the Paramount merger as Section 7 violation. DOJ declined to investigate The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition raises ordinary Section 7 concerns: two of the remaining major studios, two of the three legacy cable news operations, four overlapping streaming services. California AG Rob Bonta has an open investigation. A consumer suit in California federal court already alleges a Clayton Act violation. Press freedom groups, suing under Delaware Section 220, allege Paramount leadership “offered, solicited, or effectuated a corrupt exchange” — favorable Trump coverage for favorable regulatory treatment. The letter cites reported promises of “sweeping” changes at CNN and commitments to fire anchors the administration dislikes. Those aren’t merger synergies. They are statements of intent to reduce a competitor’s editorial vigor as a condition of the transaction closing. Compare federal posture. When Netflix bid for the same target, the Trump DOJ launched an antitrust inquiry, Republican AGs threatened investigation, and Senator Mike Lee scheduled a hearing. Once Ellison’s bid prevailed, all of it disappeared. Lee cancelled the Netflix hearing and scheduled nothing for Paramount. The deal that DOJ declined to investigate is structurally larger and includes the consolidation of CNN and CBS News under one owner. The synthesis the Trump DOJ will not make: an acquisition whose acquirer has publicly signaled intent to suppress the acquired competitor’s output, completed through a regulatory process that treated an identical transaction by a different bidder as antitrust-actionable, is not an ordinary horizontal merger. It is the structure Section 7 was written to reach. The enforcement mechanism has been neutralized, not the underlying violation. Bonta is the live enforcement vector. Former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and former DOJ antitrust chief Bill Baer have both said a coordinated multi-state AG suit is a real threat. The question is no longer whether federal antitrust law was violated. It is whether anyone with standing will be permitted to say so in court.