Next week, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is going to appear before Congress. He will face a number of questions, each more interesting than the previous. But, lo and behold, another fertile field of inquiry just opened up. From CNNMoney:

The specter of a legal battle looms now that the government is holding up AT&T's pending acquisition of Time Warner, the owner of CNN, TNT, TBS, HBO, and Warner Bros. The standoff has revived speculation that the Trump administration is trying to retaliate against CNN for its coverage of the president. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the ongoing negotiations with AT&T. According to three sources who insisted on anonymity, two options were discussed at Monday's meeting. AT&T could either divest DirecTV, the satellite broadcaster that it purchased two years ago, or it could divest all of Turner, the unit of Time Warner that includes CNN. "Threatening Turner is a fig leaf for threatening CNN," one of the sources said. AT&T is said to be reluctant to sell assets, especially Turner, which represents a significant portion of Time Warner's profits.

Is there anybody who doubts that the president* would tell his Department of Justice to knuckle CNN’s parent company because Jake Tapper was mean to him? Or that Sessions would wag his tail—thanks, Kate—and go right to work on this?

We are looking at a Cabinet shot through with the casual fraud and contempt for the law that has become the modus operandi of the American corporate class. (Speaking of which, how in hell does Wilbur Ross still have a job?). Sessions is no plutocrat, but his entire public career has been in service to them. He has dedicated his life in politics to keeping the social order inviolable against demands for equality on the basis of race and class. He’s an oligarch’s myrmidon. I hope he gets to explain what that means, at length, next week.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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