Fast money starts right now with breaking news on the time Warner and

AT&T deal. Let's get the Leslie picker in the newsroom for all the

details. Leslie. Hey Melissa, that's right. The DOJ officially filing a lawsuit this evening seeking to block

AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner challenges to vertical mergers which involve

purchases along the supply chain as opposed to competitors are rare.

The government has never won a case against a vertical merger, according to Harvard.

The Justice Department plans to argue that this deal would harm competition and thwart innovation.

DOJ officials familiar with the matter seemed confident about being able to prove their case.

Last week, Meek and Del Rahim, he's the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division,

gave a speech outlining his views on vertical mergers.

And in it, he said the behavioral remedies

were largely ineffective measures of patrolling large transactions.

That said, so far not a single state attorney general

has decided to join this case.

And AT&T said in a statement, quote,

today's DOJ lawsuit is a radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent.

Vertical mergers like this one are routinely approved because they benefit consumers

without removing any competitor from the market.

We see no legitimate reason for our merger to be treated differently.

Now, AT&T and Time Warner will be holding their own press conference in about 30 minutes, Melissa.

Leslie, do we have any color as to what the actual basis of the lawsuit is?

So what they say is it's all about the consumer that this deal in particular would harm the consumer would raise prices on the

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