Donald Trump‘s legal team made its latest filing in his lawsuit against CBS as settlement negotiations continue between network parent Paramount and the president’s team.
Sources said that an opening offer to Trump has been made, in the eight figures, but that the discussions are still in the early stages.
Meanwhile, Trump’s team faced a deadline on Wednesday to file a response to CBS’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Trump sued the network over the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris, part of an election special that was broadcast in October.
In a preview of the segment that aired on Face the Nation on October 6, Harris was shown giving an answer to a question about Israel-Gaza that was different than the one that was featured on the 60 Minutes broadcast the next day.
Trump claimed that the broadcast was deceptive in a way to boost Harris’ electoral chances. His amended, $20 billion lawsuit, filed in February, claimed violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the federal Lanham Act, laws typically used by consumers against false advertising. Trump contended that the interview “improperly diverted” traffic from his media platforms, including Truth Social.
In a motion to dismiss, CBS argued that the 60 Minutes preview and broadcast were not commercial speech, but news programming protected by the First Amendment. The network also has denied that the 60 Minutes edits were deceptive and merely made for time constraints, noting that the first part of Harris’ answer was shown on the Face the Nation preview and the second for the show’s broadcast.
In their latest filing, made overnight to a federal district court in Texas, Trump’s legal team argued that determining “that the First Amendment precludes the instant lawsuit would put the cart before the horse—the First Amendment is no shield to news distortion.”
Trump’s lawyers wrote that “because they were misled by Defendants’ false advertising and tampering with the entirety of the Interview, viewers withheld attention from President Trump and Truth Social by directing their attention to Defendants’ media platforms. This increased Defendants’ engagement, viewership, and advertising revenue, and decreased the value of President Trump’s ownership in TMTG and other media holdings.”
Read Trump’s response to CBS in 60 Minutes lawsuit.
They further added that Trump “was forced to re-direct significant time, money, and effort to correcting the public record regarding the content of the Interview and Election Special.”
A number of legal experts see the lawsuit as meritless. Katie Couric, the former anchor of CBS Evening News, called it “bulls—” in a recent interview with Jim Acosta, the former CNN host and correspondent. And based on a transcript of the unedited interview, neither part of Harris’ answer is clear.
But Paramount Global is seeking Trump administration approval for its merger with Skydance Media, and a settlement of the lawsuit is viewed as a way to secure a green light for the transaction.
In his interview with Harris, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker asked her why Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not listening to the Biden administration.
Harris replied, “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. And we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
The second part of Harris’ answer was shown on the 60 Minutes broadcast; the first part was shown on Face the Nation.
But in arguing that they were harmed by the broadcast, Trump’s team wrote that merely “having access to Defendants’ services does not mean that a consumer would have watched the Election Special even without Defendants’ deceptive advertising of it. Harris’s meandering answer in the Preview was engaging in much the same way one cannot look away from a car crash happening in slow motion.”
The Face the Nation preview was aired during the show, not during an advertising break. But Trump’s team argued that CBS’ legal team, in their motion to dismiss, “neglects to reckon with modern forms of advertising monetization; the consumers’ attention is the product which content creators vie for, which they can then monetize with advertisements.”
In another filing, Trump’s legal team also argued that the Texas court, rather than New York, was a proper venue for the litigation, as CBS had argued that the president was engaged in forum shopping. In his amended lawsuit, Trump added a resident of the state as plaintiff – Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), the former White House physician.
The federal judge assigned to the case, Matthew Kacsmaryk, was nominated by Trump in his first term. During Joe Biden’s presidency, conservative groups sought to file cases in his Amarillo jurisdiction, seeking favorable rulings, per the Texas Tribune.
In April, Kacsmaryk noted that he already had granted five deadline extensions for filings in the case, and that any further extensions would have to “demonstrate good cause.”
