Paramount to pay $16 million in settlement with Donald Trump

Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a legal dispute with President Donald Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris last October.

The decision comes as a striking concession in a case that has been seen as a threat to bedrock American principles of free speech.

In a statement provided to Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, Paramount said the money would go to Trump’s legal fees and costs, as well as his future presidential library, not to the Republican president himself. The company also said the settlement didn’t involve an apology or expression of regret.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team called the settlement a “win for the American people.”

Harris’ 60 Minutes interview drew attention when some observers noted that CBS News showed the sitting VP and presidential candidate giving different responses to a question posed by correspondent Bill Whitaker in clips that were aired on Face the Nation on Oct. 6 and the next night on 60 Minutes. The network said each clip came from one lengthy response by Harris that was edited to fit time constraints on both broadcasts.

Trump, who turned down a request to be interviewed by 60 Minutes during the 2024 presidential campaign, filed a lawsuit in Texas on Nov. 1, seeking $10 billion and alleging that CBS had deceptively edited the interview with to “tip the scales [of the election] in favor of the Democratic party.”

CBS subsequently said the case was “completely without merit” and asked a judge to dismiss it, while also engaging in settlement negotiations. In February, CBS released the transcript of the interview, which showed that Harris gave a lengthy answer to a question about Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.

Many legal experts have said Trump’s case was baseless, and that CBS was protected by the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, Paramount has been trying to complete a lucrative merger with Skydance Media for several months, and with the deal requiring approval from the Trump administration, in part because CBS owns local stations that are licensed by the government, speculation has swirled that this may have put more pressure on the company to pay up.

Paramount has maintained that the Trump case is “completely separate from, and unrelated to” the Skydance merger.

In a statement posted to social media, the Writers Guild of America East, which represents 60 Minutes‘ writers, said the settlement was a “transparent attempt to curry favors with an administration in the hopes it will allow Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger to be cleared. Paramount’s decision to capitulate to Trump threatens journalists’ ability to do their job reporting on powerful public figures.”

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also called for an investigation into the settlement and vowed to introduce legislation to “rein in corruption” via donations to presidential libraries.

“With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration’s approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,” Warren said in a statement, according to Deadline Hollywood. “Paramount has refused to provide answers to a congressional inquiry, so I’m calling for a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken.”

Warren added, “This settlement exposes a glaring need for rules to restrict donations to sitting presidents’ libraries. I will soon introduce new legislation to rein in corruption through presidential library donations. The Trump administration’s level of sheer corruption is appalling and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism.”

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The Pararmount settlement comes after ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit by Trump over statements made by anchor George Stephanopoulos, agreeing to pay $15 million in December toward Trump’s presidential library rather than engage in a public fight. And Meta reportedly paid $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the company over its decision to suspend his social media accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.