As settlement talks continue between the legal teams of Paramount Global and Donald Trump, CBS once again characterized the president’s lawsuit against the network as “meritless” and an attempt to “evade bedrock First Amendment principles.”
The comments came in the network’s filing in a Texas federal court, where Trump and a co-plaintiff, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), are urging a judge not to toss out the president’s $20 billion lawsuit over the way that the network edited an October interview with Kamala Harris.
Read the CBS response to Trump’s 60 Minutes lawsuit.
Trump has claimed that the interview edits were deceptive, designed to boost Harris’ electoral chances. But after he won the election, Trump revised the lawsuit to claim that it violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the federal Lanham Act, and that he was harmed because 60 Minutes captured traffic that otherwise would have done to his own media properties.
In the CBS filing, the network’s legal team argued that the 60 Minutes broadcast, as well as a preview that aired on Face the Nation, were editorially protected speech. Trump’s legal team has claimed that they are commercial speech given that the network promoted the Harris interview.
Trump’s legal team, CBS noted, provided “this Court with nothing that would support the conclusion that the Face the Nation and 60 Minutes Broadcasts —involving an interview of a presidential candidate about issues of utmost public concern— are anything but fully protected editorial speech, and they cite not a single case holding that news broadcasts (or promotions for such broadcasts) are commercial speech. Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected that argument. The First Amendment applies fully to the news reporting at issue and bars Plaintiffs’ claims.”
More to come.
