President Trump has expanded his $10 billion lawsuit against CBS News following the release of the unedited version of the network’s ’60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris.
The president’s legal team filed an update to his lawsuit on Friday, adding CBS’s parent company Paramount Global as a defendant because the heavily edited interview was shown on its Paramount+ streaming platform.
Congressman Ronny Jackson, a close Trump ally, was also added as a plaintiff, because he ‘is a consumer of broadcast and digital news media content’, and ‘has thus been injured by Defendants’ conduct alleged herein’, the updated lawsuit said.
The new filing, first reported by Fox News, includes multiple excerpts from Harris’ unedited interview, arguing they prove CBS News cut out unflattering remarks to help the Democratic nominee in the election.
‘Once Defendants finally released the unedited version of the Interview, it became apparent that they had engaged in gross broadcast distortion cover-up,’ the lawsuit alleges.
Trump’s attorneys cited one exchange where Harris gave a lengthy, rambling answer about Benjamin Netanyahu, while CBS only aired about seven seconds of her remarks.
‘(CBS News) manipulated not only Harris’s Reply about Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the Interview in its entirety,’ the lawsuit reads.
The president’s legal team have also filed a Freedom of Information request to the FCC, to obtain all records of its handling of his CBS lawsuit, including from Biden-era FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.
President Trump has expanded his $10 billion lawsuit against CBC News following the release of the unedited version of its ’60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris
Trump previously questioned if Democrats ‘paid off’ CBS News to favorably edit its interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris just one month before the 2024 presidential election
The unedited version of the 60 Minutes interview was ordered by Rosenworcel’s replacement in the Trump administration, Brendan Carr, as part of a complaint over ‘news distortion’ that the FCC is now investigating.
The unedited footage found that CBS News aired just 20 minutes of their hour-long interview.
In the Netanyahu exchange, cited by Trump’s attorneys in his new filing, Harris was asked by ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Bill Whitaker why ‘seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.’
Trump’s filing said Harris responded with ‘word salad’, which they claim was deceptively edited by CBS.
She responded: ‘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.’
However, in the clip that aired in the primetime election special, Harris gave a much more succinct answer, saying: ‘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 unedited version of the 60 Minutes interview was ordered by Trump administration FCC Chair Brendan Carr (pictured), as part of a complaint over ‘news distortion’ that the FCC is now investigating
Following the release of the unedited interview, Carr spoke out to say the conduct of CBS News’ editors was ‘hard to explain.’
President Trump issued a far more hostile response after the footage was released, saying CBS News should be shut down and its flagship 60 Minutes show be ‘terminated.’
‘CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before,’ Trump claimed in a post to Truth Social on Thursday morning.
‘They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview,’ he continued. ‘This was Election changing ‘stuff,’ Election Interference and, quite simply, Election Fraud at a level never seen before.’
As CBS News faces the new president’s wrath, staff at the embattled network are said to be dreading a proposed settlement of his lawsuit.
Staff members are almost universally against settling Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit, and would be especially irate if any proposed settlement comes with a mandated apology from the network, which has previously maintained that the clip with Harris was ‘not doctored.’
But executives at Paramount reportedly believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration would approve its multibillion-dollar merger with entertainment company Skydance, according to the New York Times.
Also on Wednesday, reports emerged revealing that USAID, which was shuttered this week by Trump at the advice of Elon Musk, paid $8 million to Politico for employees’ subscriptions.
President Trump called for CBS News to be shut down in response to the unedited footage’s release last week
Trump says this is further proof of the ‘biggest scandal of them all’ between Democrats, government bureaucracy and the media.
He questioned whether these entities are paying other media outlets, specifically The New York Times, to engage in activity that he claims amounts to ‘election interference’ and ‘fraud.’
In al all caps post to Truth Social, Trump wrote: ‘LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN (sic) AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS.’
‘Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did???’ the president questioned, and warned ‘Democrats can’t hide from this one.’
