Rupert Murdoch is secretly involved in a Succession-style court battle with three of his children for control of his empire after he dies.
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 sealed court document obtained by The New York Times. Instead, Murdoch wants to give it to his eldest son, the politically like-minded Lachlan, allowing him to maintain the organization’s conservative bent and—according to Murdoch’s lawyers—not ruin its market capitalization.
The court case was started before his fifth marriage, to Elena Zhukova, 67, at his Bel Air vineyard, which Lachlan attended but the other three did not. The court documents say that Murdoch’s representatives have referred to James, who has been publicly critical of his father’s Fox News and his Australian newspapers, as the “troublesome beneficiary.”
ADVERTISEMENT
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, who was an attorney general to both 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.
Elisabeth Murdoch attends the "Ron's Gone Wrong" world premiere during the 65th BFI London Film Festival at The Royal Festival Hall on October 09, 2021 in London, England.
Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for BFIMurdoch 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.
Murdoch’s argument is that the three children would disrupt the leadership of his TV stations and publications, preventing them from making money, which would not be in the best interests of those children themselves. That, his attorneys argue, allow him to change the terms of the trust.
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.
