The Murdoch family has been embroiled in a legal battle over the media dynasty's succession plan for the past 18 months, with uncertainty surrounding who will take over the trust governing the empire when Rupert Murdoch dies.
The court battle, which was largely sealed off from the public, determined in December that Murdoch's four eldest children would retain control over their father's companies after his death.
But this week, the details of the case have come to light through US publications, including a rare interview with James Murdoch by The Atlantic and the obtaining of 3,000 pages of court documents by The New York Times.
Each piece reveals the details of the case and the way it "blew a hole" in the media's most polarising and influential family.
'Project Family Harmony'
The drama centres on the future of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Rupert had wanted to amend the multi-billion-dollar family trust to ensure his eldest son, Lachlan, retained control of his companies, News Corp and Fox Corp, when he died.
It has been reported Rupert wanted Lachlan to succeed him to ensure the companies remained influential conservative political forces, which he sees as key to their profitability.
To do so, he needed to change the Murdoch Family Trust's "irrevocable" terms, and began preparing a change to the trust under a secret plan called Project Family Harmony.
The terms, as they are currently written, would split control of News and Fox four ways between Lachlan, who chairs both companies, and three of his siblings, James, Elisabeth and Prudence.
According to The New York Times, the participants working to change the trust referred to James, Murdoch's youngest son from his second marriage, as "the troublesome beneficiary", reflecting a perception he would be most vocal in using his stake to change the direction of the family's companies.
James, Elisabeth and Prudence opposed the move to change the terms of the trust and commenced legal action.
Before a court in Nevada in December 2024, the court sided with the three siblings, blowing up Rupert's succession plan — but new details of the family's feud are now coming to light.
Here are the key revelations from this last week of publicity, several of which have been disputed by a spokesman for Rupert and Lachlan.
James alleges Rupert doesn't believe daughters can make decisions
Earlier this week, The Atlantic magazine published a rare interview with James Murdoch, who detailed the succession brawl and shed light on the deteriorating family relationship between Rupert and three of his four eldest children.
After James resigned from the News Corp board in 2020, a slew of media speculation followed, fuelled by the narrative from the acclaimed TV series Succession, which follows a fictional media mogul and his children.
The Atlantic reports that observers thought Liz, Prue and James would team up to lead a family coup against Lachlan.
According to James, Rupert didn't believe Liz or Prue could possibly have been the ringleaders in any such scheme.
"He doesn't believe his adult daughters are capable of making decisions," James said.
He said a secret conspiracy between the siblings never existed.
Final season of Succession sparks family panic
When the show Succession, widely known to have been inspired by the Murdoch family, killed off the family's patriarch Logan Roy, Elisabeth Murdoch flew into a panic, according to The New York Times.
The eldest child from Murdoch's second marriage watched the episode twice and was "extremely upset" by it, The Times reported.
It said James later told the court he had never seen the show but that it had "gotten everyone hot under the collar".
Elisabeth's representative to the family trust, Mark Devereux, recalled his reaction to the episode and began to work on a memo intended to prevent a real-life repeat of the Roy family chaos.
"All of the siblings running around saying, 'Oh my God, who is supposed to say what? Does the company say something? Do I say something? Do we say something together?''" he said.
"And I thought, 'This is exactly, exactly the thing we should be avoiding because this is chaotic.'"
In 2022, Mr Devereux tried to get the siblings to think about their father's death, and a public relations strategy was prepared for the event.
Liz's spokesperson, Paddy Harveson, had worked for Buckingham Palace and had helped with Queen Elizabeth II's funeral.
The plan for the queen's death was called Project London Bridge and so the plan for Rupert's was dubbed Project Bridge.
It identified issues that would need to be addressed such as basic questions about Murdoch's burial or cremation as well as questions about how the children would vote in the family trust.
During the trial, Rupert reportedly revealed he had seen a copy of the memo and it "irritated" him.
Liz thought of herself as Switzerland between the two brothers and Mr Devereux wrote of this in the plan, the paper reported.
"You, Liz are not prepared to effectively be deciding the vote on any questions for the MFT [Murdoch Family Trust] and especially you will be under intense pressure to make a choice."
When it became apparent that Lachlan and Rupert were making plans to change the trust, she and Prue worked to try and stop it.
Emotions boiled over in a meeting of the trust when Liz, who was secretly taping the proceedings, accused her brother and father of "raping" the family company.
"If you think that is harmony, we must be in North Korea," she reportedly said.
Rupert taps away on phone during deposition
Speaking with The Atlantic, James alleged Rupert had instructed lawyers to ask stinging questions of him as he was deposed ahead of the Nevada trial.
Sitting across the table from his father in a New York law office, he was asked a series of questions from Rupert's attorney including:
- Have you ever done anything successful on your own?
- Why were you too busy to say "Happy birthday" to your father when he turned 90?
- Does it strike you that, in your account, everything that goes wrong is always somebody's fault?
At one point, the attorney reportedly referred to James and his sisters as "white, privileged, multi-billionaire trust-fund babies".
But that's not what caught James by surprise. He told The Atlantic that at one point during the deposition, he realised his father had been "texting the lawyer questions to ask me. How f***ing twisted is that?"
Lachlan blows up over 21st Century Fox Film sale
While it was James who exited Fox after the $US71 billion sale of its movie studio assets to Disney in 2019, he told The Atlantic it was Lachlan who was most threatened.
The magazine article reported one former News Corp employee account that Lachlan lost his temper over the proposed sale, which he said would leave him with "ShitCo" — his name for the current collection of news and book publishing businesses owned by News Corp and Fox.
One night at dinner with James and Rupert, Lachlan delivered an ultimatum.
He warned his father "you will not have a son" if the deal went through.
And He said to James "you will not have a brother".
Rupert and Lachlan declined to be interviewed for The Atlantic story.
A spokesperson for the duo, said James's comments to The Atlantic contained a "litany of falsehoods", noting they came from "someone who no longer works for the companies but still benefits from them financially".
'There are no good Nazis'
After white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, James told The Atlantic, he had a deep desire to say something to his employees about the protests.
But he knew how that would look to his father and brother — it would be seen as nagging.
Conflicted about what to do, it was his wife, Kathryn, that changed his thinking when she said: "If you're not going to stand up against Nazis, who are you going to stand up against?"
He then decided to send out his own statement without consulting Rupert or Lachlan. Neither ended up speaking out about the protests.
James's reaction to the protesters was also spurred on by comments made by US President Donald Trump, which were aired on Fox cable news channels.
At the time, Mr Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" of the clashes at the white supremacist rally.
In an email to friends that was leaked to the press, James rebuked Mr Trump and wrote: "I can't even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists."
Rupert Murdoch's scripted visit with daughters
While Rupert and Lachlan were working on the amended plan for the trust in secret, the media mogul worked on selling his older daughters Prue and Liz on the idea.
In early December 2023, The New York Times reported he visited London and first met with Prue, speaking to her from a list of talking points.
"These companies are my legacy," he read out.
"I have put everything into them over my life."
It was reported he then went on to say that he loved all of his children but "these companies need a designated leader and Lachlan is that leader".
The New York Times wrote that Prue was too shocked to digest the news and offer a response.
Next, Rupert met with 55-year-old Liz, who sat with her father as he delivered the same speech.
He sketched out a new structure of the trust on a notepad.
"You are completely disenfranchising me and my siblings" Liz said.
"You've blown a hole in the family."
The Claridge's dinner
A dinner Prue, Liz and James had in London on September 20, 2023, became a large part of the evidence against the three siblings in court proceedings.
The New York Times reported that the meeting in the Mayfair neighbourhood of London took place just days after Rupert signed off on the plan to change the family trust.
James said he was passing through on his way to Wales for a wedding and booked a private meeting room inside the hotel so that he and his siblings could meet for 90 minutes beforehand.
Rupert's lawyer Adam Streisand argued that at the dinner Liz, James and Prue planned to outvote Lachlan as soon as their father died.
"And is it customary for you when you have drinks with your siblings and dinner to book a hotel conference room?"
"No," Liz conceded. But she noted that they wanted to keep their conversation private because they would be talking about their father's death.
Mr Streisand continued to push, asking if they had spoken about ousting Lachlan after their father's death.
"Absolutely not," Liz said.
One of the children's lawyers, Justin Clarke, developed a competing portrait of his clients as victims of an underhanded legal manoeuvre by their father and brother.
James insisted that he and his sisters never discussed toppling their brother but acknowledged that at the dinner he had expressed frustration with their father and brother's leadership style.
He said they had spoken about the voting power they would have after their father died.
"Do you deny saying anything about suggesting that once you do have your agency, that you do something about getting your brother out?" Mr Streisand continued.
"I do deny that," James insisted. "That did not happen."
What happened after the trial?
A month after the trial's conclusion, but before the verdict was delivered, James, Liz and Prue decided to reach out to their father.
They were feeling sentimental, given Thanksgiving was approaching and the family had been torn apart for so long.
According to The Atlantic, they wrote a letter to Rupert saying: "Over and above any other feelings all of us may have — of upset and shock — our unifying emotion is sorrow and grief."
"We are asking you with love to find a way to put an end to this destructive judicial path so that we can have a chance to heal as a collaborative and loving family."
A couple of days later, The Atlantic reported, Rupert wrote back.
"Only to conclude that I was right," he told them.
He instructed them to have their lawyers contact his if they wanted to talk further. That was the end of that conversation.
But the trial didn't go Rupert or Lachlan's way. On December 7, they lost the battle.
However, they have appealed against last year's Nevada court decision that rejected their attempt to secure control of the trust.
