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Welcome to the latest edition of Breaker. If this email has been forwarded, you can subscribe here and send your questions and complaints here. If you have a tip contact the 24/7 Breaker Tip Hotline via text or Signal # 551 655 2343. Anonymity guaranteed!

In tonight’s edition, accusations from a senior business reporter at The New York Post that a Trump administration story he was working on was a victim of “catch and kill.”

Plus a star MSNBC anchor considering leaving the network; the multimillionaire businessman considering buying Air Mail and the one-time Presidential candidate making an appearance at the Guardian’s news conference later this week. 

Mentioned tonight: Jeff Bezos, Will Lewis, Matt Murray, Mark Lazarus, Rebecca Kutler, Keith Poole, Emma Tucker, Col Allan, Rupert Murdoch, Gerry Cardinale, Jeff Zucker, Lord Rothermere, Graydon Carter, Dovid Efune and Katherine Viner.

Will The Beat go on?

(Exclusive.) A high-profile MSNBC personality is in discussions to leave the network, Breaker has learned.

Ari Melber, 45, has held meetings with rival networks and is considering departing the Comcast owned MSNBC as it prepares to be spun into a new company led by Mark Lazarus called VERSANT, according to two people familiar with the matter. He is also weighing whether to start his own media company.

Melber, a ratings winner and MSNBC’s chief legal correspondent, has hosted his 6pm show The Beat since 2017 and has a substantial following on YouTube where clips of his show draw tens of thousands of views (which is part of new MSNBC boss Rebecca Kutler’s strategy for growth).

Executives are watching to see how MSNBC’s new evening lineup, The Weeknight featuring Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez and Jen Psaki’s The Briefing, perform.

Losing Melber to a rival network after star Rachel Maddow has reduced her workload from five nights a week to one would be seen as a big blow. Melber and a rep for MSNBC declined to comment.

New York Post “Catch and Kill”

(Exclusive.)  Business reporter Josh Kosman, a 16-year veteran of the New York Post, received a tip from within the Drug Enforcement Agency in late February. 

The tipster alleged that Donald Trump’s pick to lead the DEA – Terry Cole – had a chequered past that included leading two operations that lead to unnecessary deaths. 

“It was a pretty amazing scoop,” Kosman explained to Breaker. Kosman briefed multiple editors at the Post including the Business, Features and Political editors who all encouraged him to pursue the story.

But there were early signs of external pressure. “I was told by a White House press person that Karoline Leavitt was looking at this real carefully,” Kosman told Breaker about conversations he was having with the White House about Cole. 

After clearing several hurdles including getting two on record sources and speaking to more than a dozen former top officials the story was written, edited and slated to run on Sunday March 22nd. But it continued to be pushed off to later in the week.

Eventually Kosman emailed the Post’s political editor to ask for an update. “There’s no good way to say this, so I’ll just say it: KP [Keith Poole] spiked the story,” the Post’s political editor emailed Kosman March 27, in an email obtained and reviewed by Breaker. The bombshell email went on to say…

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