DOJ Said To Have Taken Depositions in Comcast/TWC Review

The Department of Justice has deposed officials at Comcast, Time Warner Cable and third-party companies in connection with Comcast's planned buy of TWC, said industry officials involved in the proceeding. Some DOJ officials are leaning toward recommending the deal be blocked, Bloomberg News reported Friday. The DOJ procedure for blocking the transaction would be to file a lawsuit against it, and the depositions would provide evidence for that proceeding. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., said in a blog on Tech Crunch that the report on DOJ’s leanings showed the “tide is turning” against the deal.

Comcast and TWC officials are to meet with Justice Wednesday to discuss the deal, said an industry official connected with the transaction. It's said to be one of many meetings between the companies proposing the combine and DOJ. Depositions don’t necessarily indicate preparations for an antitrust suit, said industry officials and University of Colorado Law School Dean Philip Weiser, an antitrust expert who used to work at DOJ.

Gathering information is part of the DOJ process and doesn’t indicate it has come to a final decision, said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. PK is among those outright opposing Comcast/TWC. DOJ might have recently arrived at the point where it has begun examining ways to mitigate potential competitive harm from Comcast/TWC, Weiser said.

“There is no basis for a lawsuit to challenge the transaction,” a Comcast spokeswoman said. DOJ and the FCC declined to comment.

Comcast executives were deposed by DOJ weeks ago, said an industry official connected with the deal. It's standard practice for the DOJ to conduct interviews under oath as it considers deal approval, industry officials said. Opponents of the transaction have said the depositions could be suggestive of a negative outcome for Comcast. The Stop Mega Comcast coalition has been pointing to the short time on the now-paused FCC deal review clock and the lack of discussion of conditions at the FCC as indicating that the commission is also planning to block the deal. A Comcast spokeswoman said the FCC is still receiving answers to interrogatories. And Weiser doesn’t read anything into the lack of discussion on deal conditions, he said.

Comcast/TWC "will result in significant consumer benefits -- faster broadband speeds, access to a superior video experience, and more competition in business services resulting in billions of dollars of cost savings," the Comcast spokeswoman said. "These benefits have been essentially unchallenged in the record -- and all can be achieved without any reduction of competition. As a result, there is no basis for a lawsuit to block the transaction."