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Trust Issues: News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch photographed with (L-R) James Murdoch, Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, and Lachlan Murdoch. (Photo by Tom Stoddart/Getty Images)
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 today’s edition, with succession planning and intra-family maneuvering settled in the Murdoch’s Nevada case, there is now a new fight on whether the public gets to see what happened inside a courtroom that has, until recently, operated largely in the shadows. We have uncovered a series of newly filed documents that detail Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s efforts to ensure highly sensitive (and potentially embarrassing) documents never see the light of day.
Plus, we have a scooplet on a new podcast from Semafor that will see some of Wall Street’s biggest movers and shakers go behind the microphone.
And, it’s Thursday, which means Journo Jobs is back. Tonight we have gigs at A16Z New Media, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, MarketWatch, WSJ Pro, and Fortune.
Mentioned tonight: Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, James Murdoch, Jesse Angelo, Elisabeth Murdoch, Prudence MacLeod, Wendi Deng, Rebekah Brooks, Siobhan McKenna, Robert Thomson, Chase Carey, Jose Aznar, Natalie Bancroft, Paul Ryan, Brian Nick, Andrew Bolt, Paddy Haverson, Alexander Falconi, Bill Barr, Mark Devereux, Richard Oldfield, Jim Rutenberg, Jonathan Mahler, Savannah Guthrie, Dario Amodei, Tyler Denk, MrBeast, Bari Weiss, Hannah Natanson, Steven Ginsburg, Rebecca Kutler, Deborah Turness, David Cho, Jeff McCracken, Matt Murray, Alice Waters, Salman Rushdie, Maxi Tani, Ben Smith, Liz Hoffman, Rohan Goswami, and more.
Murdoch Trust Issues
(Exclusive.) In September, Lachlan Murdoch paid his siblings $3.3 billion to settle the family trust dispute, cementing his position as Rupert Murdoch’s chosen successor to run Fox and News Corp. As part of the deal, Lachlan’s brother James Murdoch and sisters Elisabeth Murdoch and Prudence MacLeod each received a cool $1.1 billion to walk away from the family media empire.
Now, just days away from Rupert’s 95th birthday, Lachlan and his father have taken extraordinary legal action in Nevada to prevent what are potentially embarrassing court transcripts and documents from becoming public, Breaker has learned.
Dozens of pages of documents, obtained and reviewed by Breaker, that were filed in recent days in the Second Judicial District Court in Nevada, show that lawyers for Rupert and Lachlan have been working to ensure the highly-sensitive material never sees the light of day.
On Tuesday, a Nevada nonprofit news organization, Our Nevada Judges (ONJ), filed an opposition to the flurry of motions seeking to keep major portions of the case under seal.
The court had previously indicated its intent to unseal the case record unless the parties involved formally moved to seal specific documents. Now, ONJ (a non-party) is asking the court to deny most of those requests, arguing that the release of the sensitive material is in the public interest.
The four main parts of the historic legal action that Rupert and Lachlan are determined to keep secret are …
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⁘ As credited in The New York Times, CNBC, Axios, The New York Post, CNN, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and more.