Michael Roberson, one of the other new managing directors that Rupert and Lachlan had installed, followed. Like Barr, he had a fiduciary duty to carefully consider the amendment and weigh whether it was in the best interests of the beneficiaries. He admitted, however, that he had not done any substantive research into the original trust documents before casting his vote for Top Hat, though he did say that he had hired his father-in-law, who is a lawyer, to look over the documents for him.
The last of the three new directors, Bill O’Donnell, reviewed the history of his involvement in the case, explaining that when he was told who the client was, he initially thought he was being asked to serve on the family trust of Alex Murdaugh — a South Carolina lawyer convicted of shooting his wife and son to death. “I thought, Oh, no, I don’t want to get involved in that.” Under questioning, he acknowledged that he had not personally reviewed the rules that governed the Murdoch family trust or even the operating agreement for the new trustees that he was voting to create, relying instead on lawyers to advise him.
Rupert was next. In a sense, he had no one to blame but himself for his predicament, boxed in as he was by the trust he created. But he signed off on the trust in 2006, before he picked Lachlan as his successor and before the family splintered politically.
As he saw it, the stakes had changed over the past 18 years. The older he got, the more convinced he was of the importance of the conservative empire he was leaving behind. He was not a billionaire philanthropist — a David Koch or a Michael Bloomberg or a Warren Buffett — who had steered his fortune toward pet causes or funded various monuments to himself. He had given his children everything, and his empire was his cause and his monument. Whatever the fine print said, if he wanted to change the family trust that he himself created — containing the shares of two companies that he himself built — wasn’t that his prerogative?
Adam Streisand, Rupert’s lawyer, walked him through the decision to amend the trust. Rupert’s voice was faint at times, but at 93, he was still perfectly cogent. “I just felt sure, very certain that if these things weren’t settled, there would be trouble, and the trouble would be damaging,” Rupert said. He elaborated: “If there’s uncertainty about the management, the public will feel it, inside the company would feel it.”