NEW YORK—Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Donald Trump, ending a long-running legal saga that could clear the way for Federal Communications Commission approval of the Paramount-Skydance Media merger.
Trump filed the suit last year, asking for $10 billion in damages, an amount he later raised to $20 million. The lawsuit claimed that CBS’s “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with his 2024 election foe, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in a “deceitful” manner designed to influence the election.
CBS News’ actions represented “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion calculated to (a) confuse, deceive, and mislead the public, and (b) attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party as the heated 2024 Presidential Election” said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division.
A number of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, and legal scholars had argued the suit was frivolous and that CBS would prevail in court.
In settling the suit, Paramount said it would pay Trump’s legal fees and that the remaining money would go to Trump’s presidential library. Paramount also said that settlement did not involve an apology.
Critics have said that Trump was using the FCC’s investigation of the merger and a “news distortion” complaint as a way to put additional pressure on Paramount to settle the lawsuit. The FCC has denied there is any connection between the suit and themerger approval process. But it has said that the news distortion complaint about how the Harris interview was edited would play a role in the merger review.
