There’s no way to sugar coat the corruption here. The Verge reported, “While legal experts said [Trump’s] suit was baseless, it placed Paramount under pressure to appease the President as its long-drawn out merger plans with Skydance require approval from the Trump administration.”
The Verge also reported that Paramount claimed in a statement, “this lawsuit is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process.” The money is supposedly going to Trump’s future presidential library. They also agreed to pay his legal fees as part of the settlement.
Sure, Jan.
CNN’s Brian Stelter explained why this is a slap in the face for CBS journalists and a flashing red sign for journalism, in general.
STELTER: This entire legal battle stems from one question and one answer on a 60 Minutes interview last fall. The interview was with then Vice President Kamala Harris. And out of the dozens of questions and answers, one particular answer stood out. CBS aired part of a Harris answer about the war in Gaza on one day. and another part of her answer on another day. This was a weird discrepancy and Trump alleged that CBS was trying to help Harris and hurt him by editing the show in order to help the Democrat.
He called this election interference, and he filed a lawsuit in Texas under a pretty unusual consumer protection law. Again, legal experts said Trump didn’t really have a case. But CBS took this seriously, in part because of concern that Trump would try to delay its Paramount/Skydance merger.
Stelter further explained that the settlement talks “went on for months” as “Trump’s attorneys reportedly asked for tens of millions of dollars, and the deal ultimately ended up somewhere in the middle.” He noted that Paramount is paying exactly the same price Disney’s ABC paid Trump over his bogus lawsuit against that outlet.
The only difference is that unlike Disney, Paramount will not apologize. “That stands out because 60 Minutes correspondents were especially concerned by the prospect of an apology, given that the news magazine did nothing wrong,” Stelter added. But I doubt many at CBS News are breathing a sigh of relief. “The raw tapes and transcripts from that Harris interview showed that CBS engaged in perfectly normal editing practices,” Stelter said.
Team Trump is celebrating another scalp “even though Trump had claimed billions of dollars in damages, and wound up settling for a tiny fraction as much,” Stelter wrote on CNN.com. “’With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit,’ the spokesman said. ‘CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle.’”
However, Paramount’s legal troubles are not over. According to Stelter, the Freedom of the Press Foundation plans to file a shareholder’s derivative lawsuit over the settlement.
Also, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is demanding a full investigation into the settlement. “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,” she said in a statement. “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.”
Sen. Ron Wyden is calling for federal charges:
