The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret, and the money will not be paid to Trump directly or indirectly.
President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS parent company Paramount over edits made to a “60 Minutes” interview was settled on July 2 after the media company agreed to pay $16 million, the company said.
Paramount said in a statement that the money would be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library and would not be paid to him directly or indirectly.
“The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret,” the company stated.
The Epoch Times contacted Paramount and the White House for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Trump sued Paramount for $10 billion in October 2024 over its handling of an interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The lawsuit alleged the network deceptively edited the interview in an “attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party” in the 2024 presidential election and accused CBS of having engaged in “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion.”
The president amended his complaint in February, increasing the claim for damages to $20 billion and alleging that CBS and Paramount’s actions amounted to false advertising and unfair competition.
The amended complaint also named Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) as a plaintiff, alleging he was harmed as a consumer of CBS’s news programming.
Trump’s legal team said in the amended complaint that the interview “was conducted by CBS’s Bill Whitaker … and recorded in two sessions.”
On Oct. 6, CBS aired a promotional excerpt of the interview during CBS’s “Face the Nation,” in which Harris responded to a question asked by Whitaker regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “incoherently and indecisively,” the lawsuit said.
The following day, on Oct. 7, CBS broadcast and posted the interview online, according to the lawsuit. When it aired, it contained “approximately fifteen minutes of manipulated footage from the interview interspersed with about six minutes of footage related to the topics being addressed.”
During the broadcast, Whitaker asked Harris the same question regarding Netanyahu, and this time her reply was “coherent” and “decisive,” the lawsuit said.
“Quite simply, the version of the Interview that Plaintiffs and other consumers ultimately saw during 60 Minutes on October 7, 2024 was not the Interview that Defendants advertised on October 6, 2024 during Face the Nation and at other times prior to the Election Special,” the complaint said.
“The Preview and the Interview are both distortive, and to Defendants’ commercial and pecuniary benefit. Instead of broadcasting and posting the Interview online as advertised during the Preview and at other times prior to the Election Special, Defendants deceptively manipulated the Interview in a manner calculated to make Harris appear coherent and decisive, and thus the product more commercially appealing to Defendants’ audience.”
CBS previously denied that the interview was doctored, said the lawsuit was “completely without merit,” and stated the company would “vigorously defend against it.”
In January, the company agreed to hand over its full unedited transcript and camera feeds from the interview to the Federal Communications Commission.
The unedited transcript showed that some of Harris’s answers were cut roughly in half. It also clarified her full response to Whitaker’s question about Netanyahu—which lawyers for Trump referred to in their lawsuit—and that Harris’s complete answer was a combination of the two clips that were aired.
CBS and Paramount asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit in March, and the case entered mediation in April.
Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of “60 Minutes,” said on April 22 that he was stepping down, citing a loss of full editorial independence.
Shortly after, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon announced that she was resigning and described the past few months at the network as challenging.
Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report.
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