Key Points
- Paramount hired former Justice Department antitrust official Rene Augustine as Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy amid its pursuit of Warner Bros Discovery.
- Augustine, who worked under Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim at the DOJ, will oversee regulatory and diplomatic strategy from Washington, D.C.
- The appointment comes as Paramount competes with Netflix in bidding for WBD’s film studio, cable networks and streaming assets.
Paramount has hired a former Justice Department antitrust official with close ties to the Trump administration to lead its public policy initiatives as the company continues to pursue Warner Bros Discovery (WBD).
The official, Rene Augustin, will join the company next Tuesday as its new Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy, reporting directly to Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim.
She will be based in Washington, D.C., and will regularly interact with teams in Los Angeles, New York and internationally, Paramount said in a statement on Friday.
In a memo to staff announcing the hire, Delrahim said Augustine will be responsible for developing strategic policies “that advance our business objectives and building key diplomatic relationships that are important for advancing those objectives globally.”
“I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with Rene at the Department of Justice, at the Senate and at the White House and know she is uniquely qualified and experienced to represent Paramount across a variety of policy, regulatory and diplomatic matters,” Delrahim wrote.
Augustine previously served from 2019 to 2021 as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division during President Donald Trump’s first term, overseeing international antitrust matters as well as the division’s competition, policy and advocacy sections. In that role, she developed international antitrust enforcement policy and represented the United States in engagements with foreign competition authorities. She worked under Delrahim, who at the time led the Antitrust Division.
Most recently, Augustine held advisory roles at the Kennedy Center for nearly five years, first as a presidential appointee to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts and later as co-Chair of the National Committee for the Performing Arts.
Her career also includes senior roles in the Trump White House, where she served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office. From 2005 to 2009, she was Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. Augustine has also served as Senior Counsel to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, practiced at Covington & Burling, clerked for a federal judge and taught as an adjunct professor at George Mason University Law School.
Paramount recently hired lobbyist Ted Lehman as Senior Vice President and Head of U.S. Public Policy and Government Affairs. Augustine holds a law degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Duke University. She is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia, Maryland and California and to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The new hires come as Paramount continues to pursue WBD’s film studio, cable networks business and streaming platforms after the company put its properties on the auction block. Late last year, WBD announced an agreement to sell its film studio and HBO business to Netflix, a plan that involves spinning out its cable networks business into one called Discovery Global.
Paramount contends its counter-offers are substantially better, because it involves the entirety of WBD’s business and has a stronger valuation based on its combination of cash and stock. The company has threatened to take its bid directly to shareholders as part of a hostile takeover plot. WBD contends the Netflix offer is the better of the two bids, though Paramount’s pursuit has convinced Netflix to improve its offer at least once.
