The parent company of CBS News has offered President Donald Trump $15 million to settle a $20 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the network, according to a new report.
Trump filed the lawsuit over last year’s “60 Minutes” broadcast with then-Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging election interference through highly selective editing of Harris during the broadcast.
Trump’s legal team has rejected the offer from Paramount Global, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited sources it did not name.
Trump is seeking at least $25 million and an apology from CBS News, the Journal reported.
The Journal wrote that Trump is considering another lawsuit against CBS concerning news bias.
The lawsuit is an impediment as Paramount seeks to merge with Skydance Media, while it has also been a bone of contention at CBS News, where the departure of CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon has been linked to what has been reported as her refusal to issue an apology to Trump.
In December, Disney settled a lawsuit from Trump by putting $15 million towards Trump’s presidential library.
The lawsuit came after ABC’s George Stephanopoulos incorrectly claimed Trump was found guilty in a civil suit of rape. Meta paid out $25 million to settle a suit after banning Trump in 2021; X paid about $10 million in a similar suit.
In his column in the New York Post, Charles Gasparino wrote that Shari Redstone, Paramount’s top shareholder, wants to settle the lawsuit and pay Trump up to $50 million.
Will Trump eventually get what he wants from Paramount?
One possible hitch is that paying out such a large sum could be construed as bribery, with the Skydance merger before the Federal Communications Commission, Gasparino wrote.
“This lawsuit is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process,” a Paramount representative said in a statement. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case.”
Gasparino wrote, “Redstone’s decision is said to be imminent.”
As Paramount weighs its options, Trump’s legal team has fired back against a filing from CBS to have Trump’s lawsuit dismissed, according to Variety.
Part of Trump’s argument is that CBS damaged Truth Social’s parent company Trump Media & Technology Group.
In its editing of the Harris interview, CBS’s “conduct, including news distortion, constituted commercial speech which cannot by any reasonable interpretation be found to have constituted editorial judgment, and that speech damaged Plaintiffs,” Trump’s filing said.
“The fact that such commercial speech was issued by a news organization does not insulate Defendants from liability under the First Amendment,” the filing continued, adding, “[T]he First Amendment is no shield to news distortion.”
The filing said the actions of CBS “led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers, including Plaintiffs, regarding a household name of the legacy media apparently deceptively distorting its broadcasts, and then resisting attempts to clear the public record.”
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