At this point, I'm not willing to jump to the conclusion that there's any wrongful interference by the political arm of the Trump administration. On paper, the head of the anti-trust division, Makan Delrahim, looks more like a technocrat than a Trump loyalist. He had the Deputy AG role for the antitrust division for a couple years under Bush, so he's basically just doing the same job another step up the career ladder. He's definitely a Republican and a bit of a political animal, having had a role in pushing Gorsuch through, but he got a 73-21 approval vote in the Senate for his nomination to the current role, which suggests there wasn't a whole lot of controversy about it. Those who objected to his nomination did so not on the basis of any question of his ability to be independent from Trump, but rather simply because his prior lobbying on behalf of merging companies suggested his ideology would make him overly friendly to mergers.
Given how bad the "Trumpstench" is, I think it's fair to look extra hard into the question of whether there's some double-standard going against CNN, and especially whether there's partisan political pressure being brought to bear. But, so far, I'm willing to give this one the benefit of the doubt.
