Left: In this Oct. 30, 2018 file photo, Rupert Murdoch introduces Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Herman Kahn Award Gala, in New York (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File). Right: UNITED STATES – FEBRUARY 25: Attorney General William Barr arrives to the Capitol to attend the Senate Republican Policy luncheons on Tuesday, February 25, 2020 (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images).
Rupert Murdoch will not be allowed to change his family’s trust in order to solidify control over his media empire with his eldest son Lachlan Murdoch, a Nevada commissioner recently ruled.
The ruling in question is under seal. It was authored by Probate Commissioner Edmund “Joe” Gorman, Jr., and released Saturday, according to The New York Times, who reportedly obtained a copy.
Oftentimes trenchant in both legal analysis and legal conclusions, Gorman accuses both the patriarch and his oldest adult son of acting in “bad faith” by attempting to pull off a “carefully crafted charade.”
The commission reportedly found the effort aimed to “permanently cement Lachlan Murdoch’s executive roles” over News Corp and Fox Corporation “regardless of the impacts such control would have over the companies or the beneficiaries” of the irrevocable family trust.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the Murdoch Family Trust was set up in 1999 to transition the relevant media holdings to the control of Murdoch’s four oldest children, each of whom would have an equal vote, upon his death. News Corp is the umbrella group for outlets like the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, while Fox Corporation is home to conservative broadcasters like Fox News and Fox Business.
In 2023, Rupert Murdoch made moves to make the calculus change — in Lachlan Murdoch’s favor and at Lachlan Murdoch’s behest, according to Gorman. The alteration would have shifted control to Lachlan Murdoch at the expense of the three other voting rights beneficiaries. The move was a surprise to Prudence Murdoch, Elisabeth Murdoch, and James Murdoch. They opposed the change and sought to challenge the would-be new regime in court.
Two of Murdoch’s other children are financially cared for but lacking voting rights, according to the trust.
More Law&Crime coverage: Murdoch v. Murdoch: The family fight for control over a media dynasty
In June, the Nevada probate commissioner said the otherwise irrevocable trust could be amended if the 93-year-old could show he made the changes in good faith and for the sole benefit of his heirs.
On Saturday, the commission found that was not the case.
“The effort was an attempt to stack the deck in Lachlan Murdoch’s favor after Rupert Murdoch’s passing so that his succession would be immutable,” Gorman wrote in the ruling. “The play might have worked; but an evidentiary hearing, like a showdown in a game of poker, is where gamesmanship collides with the facts and at its conclusion, all the bluffs are called and the cards lie face up.”
The commissioner also had some choice words for the team that intended to upset the 1999 agreement — particularly Bill Barr, who previously served as the country’s 77th and 85th attorney general.
In one passage, he said Barr and others added as new representatives to the irrevocable family trust by the father and son “demonstrated a dishonesty of purpose and motive.” Those new representatives were added, Gorman said, to disenfranchise James Murdoch, Elisabeth Murdoch, and Prudence Murdoch.
In an instance of, perhaps, the classic formulation where art and life pingpong back and forth in some uncanny imitation of one another — often expressed in a comic form of infinite regress — the dispute was reportedly jet-fueled by the HBO hit series “Succession.”
And Gorman took note of the simulacrum.
In an April 2023 episode of the series, “the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos,” the commissioner wrote. A so-called “‘Succession’ memo” was then initiated by a representative for Elisabeth Murdoch. Legal jockeying and maneuvering followed.
Then, Lachlan Murdoch initiated the plan to change the operative legal agreement, the commissioner noted. Gorman said the scion’s attorneys worked with his father’s attorneys on an arrangement “perhaps too optimistically” termed “Project Family Harmony.”
The since-frustrated new order, in a blueprint of sorts, singled out James Murdoch as a “troublesome beneficiary” over fears that he and his sisters might plot and scheme to oust the eldest Murdoch from his editorial perch atop the right-wing media empire — and perhaps even alter or abandon the company’s conservative course.
In court, the trio disputed any such allegations and, Gorman said, “disavowed any plan to oust their brother.” The commissioner was also not convinced that the objecting siblings “shared any singleness of purpose in changing the management of Fox News” or any other media holding under the Murdoch aegis.
The winners welcomed the news by saying they hoped the result would help the fractured family come together.
In a statement to the Times, a representative for Rupert Murdoch said he and his eldest son planned to appeal.
The probate commissioner offered harsh words in closing.
“The court, after considering the facts of this case in the light of the law, sees the cards for what they are and concludes this raw deal will not, over the signature of this probate commissioner, prevail,” Gorman wrote.
