Despite staff resignations and admonishment from lawmakers, CBS News’ parent company Paramount Global has gone ahead and settled with President Donald Trump over his $20 billion lawsuit complaining about a “60 Minutes” episode.
Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million in a move that critics have warned could have grave implications for press freedom, empowering the president to exact revenge on media outlets that don’t provide favorable coverage of him. The settlement also clears up the quarrel ahead of Paramount’s sought-out merger with Skydance Media, which needs approval from the Trump administration.
“Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval. When Democrats retake power, I’ll be first in line calling for federal charges,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on Bluesky. “In the meantime, state prosecutors should make the corporate execs who sold out our democracy answer in court.”
Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has insisted that his agency’s pivotal review of the merger is unrelated to Trump’s lawsuit. Carr received a bipartisan rebuke from former FCC commissioners after he reopened a separate case involving “60 Minutes.”
The settlement funds will be allocated to a future presidential library, and will not be paid personally to Trump or Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), the plaintiffs in the case, according to Paramount.
As part of the settlement, Paramount stated that “60 Minutes” will release transcripts of interviews that it conducts with U.S. presidential candidates after they’ve aired. It added that this settlement “does not include a statement of apology or regret,” which had previously been a point of contention for Trump.
“Rewarding Trump with tens of millions of dollars for filing this bogus lawsuit will not cause him to back down on his war against the media and a free press,” a group of Democratic senators, including Wyden, warned in a joint statement in May. “It will only embolden him to shakedown, extort and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like.”
A key figure in the deal is Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone, who controls the company with her family. In May, Sens. Wyden, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent Redstone a letter expressing concern she and other executives “may be engaging in improper conduct involving the Trump Administration in exchange for approval of its merger with Skydance Media.
A spokesperson for Redstone said she’d recused herself from the settlement talks. But Puck reported that Redstone had told “60 Minutes” producers to hold back on stories critical of Trump until the merger was complete.
In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount offered Trump $15 million to settle his lawsuit. He reportedly refused, demanding more than $25 million and an apology from CBS News over its “60 Minutes” episode with then-Vice President Kamala Harris last October.
Then, at the end of June, a mediator proposed a $20 million settlement, with $17 million of that going to Trump’s presidential foundation.
Trump claimed in his lawsuit that the interview with Harris, then his rival for the presidency, was deceptively edited in a way that would boost her chances of winning the election. Pushing back, CBS released the full transcript of the interview, demonstrating to the public that it didn’t engage in any nefarious editing.
But Trump’s lawyers claimed in May that he suffered “mental anguish” from the interview, and the president continues to rail against “60 Minutes” for its coverage of him, saying CBS News will have to “pay a big price” for going after him.
As talks of a settlement swirled, two of CBS News’ top employees resigned. In April, “60 Minutes” top producer Bill Owens departed, saying it had “become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”
Then in May, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon also announced she was leaving the network, saying in her resignation announcement that it had “become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”
Both were recently invited to testify at a hearing before the California state Senate, which is investigating whether Paramount is violating any laws by settling with Trump.
Speaking on CBS’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in May, Sen. Sanders stressed that Paramount shouldn’t cave to Trump.
“He’s going after universities,” Sanders said of Trump. “He’s going after law firms who have represented clients that he didn’t like. This is what authoritarianism is about.”