How the Ellisons pulled off Paramount-WBD settlement talks and cleared major hurdle to forging media giant

The deciding factor in California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s decision to settle with Paramount and allow its purchase of Warner Bros.Discovery with minor concessions was the political pressure placed on him by Gov.

Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the likely next governor, Xavier Beccera, The Post has learned.That pressure built up for weeks as Paramount CEO David Ellison and his troops made it clear to all involved that the company was dead serious about leaving LA for Nashville, Tenn., or Austin, Tex.The exec made that very clear to Bonta in a one-on-one meeting late last week, according to people familiar with the matter. Ellison and Paramount’s chief legal officer Makan Delrahim had “tricks up their sleeve” and used every one of them in recent weeks, as The Post reported.They lobbied Dem centrists over possible job losses; demanded that Bonta and the 11 state AGs who joined his case post a $1.88 billion bond supported by the White House; got GOP state AGs to ask the Supreme Court to block the lawsuit; and then got an assist from SCOTUS, which said the prosecutors had to answer the complaint.

Ellison also made it clear that even with minor concessions, he would be gracious and let Bonta take the win whenever a deal was announced.But the political press was key.It caused a political rift within the state’s Democratic Party apparatus.

The more business-friendly moderates were increasingly agitated that Ellison would leave (he was seen scoping out office space in the Nashville area) and take some 50,000 jobs with him – and close the famed Paramount lot, an iconic symbol of Hollywood. “All these people – Newsom, Bass and Becerra – are running for office now and in the future; Newsom wants to be president.Were they going to risk their political career over a lawsuit that has little antitrust merit?” said one person familiar with the negotiations.

“No way.”Still, the deal was not done until Sunday night.People inside plane...