# AT&T - Time Warner Acquisition [[AT&T]]'s ~$85 billion acquisition of [[Time Warner]] — owner of [[CNN]], HBO, and Warner Bros. — closed on **June 14, 2018**, days after a federal judge rejected the Trump [[Department of Justice]]'s antitrust suit to block it. The suit was widely read as politically motivated against [[CNN]], a frequent Trump target; critics cited it as a selective-enforcement contrast to the friendlier treatment of conservative-aligned media deals. The vertically integrated content-and-distribution strategy failed. Renamed [[WarnerMedia]], the unit was offloaded into the Discovery merger in 2022, making AT&T's ownership of CNN one of the shortest in the network's history. See: [[CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery Timeline]], [[Antitrust]], [[Media Consolidation]]