The Succession-esque drama between Rupert Murdoch and his children has ramped up as the media tycoon battles three of them in a secret court fight.
Murdoch, 93, has urged a court to block three of his children—James, Elisabeth, and Prudence—from gaining control of his family’s business after he dies, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. Instead, Murdoch wants to give it to his eldest son, the politically like-minded Lachlan, to maintain the organization’s conservative bent and not ruin its market capitalization.
To achieve the family lockout, Murdoch sought to amend an irrevocable family trust that would have split control of the trust between the four heirs—unless Murdoch could show how his plan to change it would benefit each child. The document obtained by the Times outlined a review of the case’s facts by a probate commissioner, Edmund Gorman Jr. (Gorman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Murdoch argued to a Reno, Nevada, court that only Lachlan could maintain its current commercial value, thereby providing financial windfalls to each of his children, according to the Times. He was primarily concerned with the “lack of consensus” among the siblings, fearing it “would impact the strategic direction at both companies including a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content.”
William Barr, a former attorney general under George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump, is one of the people helping Murdoch alter the trust. Barr did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawyers representing Murdoch and three of his children did not immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment. A representative for Murdoch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Murdoch has previously stated his desire for Lachlan—who oversees the parent companies of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post—to succeed him. Lachlan’s appointment to the top of Fox Corp. in 2019 following Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox was widely seen as an opportunity for the eldest son’s ascension to the top of the empire.
It came a year before James Murdoch, often seen as the more liberal-leaning Murdoch child, criticized his family’s editorial decisions before he resigned from the board of News Corp. over its right-wing tilt. “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” he wrote in his July 2020 resignation letter.
While two of Murdoch’s six children, Elisabeth and Prudence, have often stayed out of the family squabbles, the document obtained by the Times indicates they are aligned with James in protesting their father’s decision. In the document, the three argue the move violates the trust and was not done in good faith. (Murdoch’s two other children, from his third marriage to Wendi Deng, have equity in the trust but no voting rights.)
The case is set to go to trial in September, according to the Times.
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