Lawyers for Paramount Global and President Trump may be close to agreeing on a number to settle Mr. Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS over the editing of Vice President Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview. But according to a new report, there’s a problem that could easily scuttle the proposed $20 million deal : Mr. Trump wants an apology, which Paramount is refusing to offer.
Whether any ground had been made in the talks was unclear for some time until the Wall Street Journal, on Wednesday, reported that the mediator in the settlement talks proposed a $20 million settlement, with $17 million going to Mr. Trump’s presidential foundation and “millions more” going to legal fees. The deal would also require Paramount to run public service announcements about combating antisemitism.
Paramount’s attorneys have reportedly said the settlement needs to be in the same range as other media and technology companies, like Disney, Facebook, and X, which have settled lawsuits from Mr. Trump.
A noteworthy part of the Journal’s report stated that Mr. Trump’s team has been seeking an apology for the editing, and that Paramount “isn’t prepared” to offer an apology. The Journal also said it “couldn’t be learned whether Trump’s team is still seeking an apology.” The report said that settlement talks are “fluid and an agreement might not be reached.”
Paramount did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.
While the amount of the settlement seems to have become a sticking point in the negotiations, another major issue surrounding the settlement talks has been the question of whether Paramount will issue a controversial apology.
Mr. Trump sued CBS in October for the editing of the Harris interview, which removed what critics call a “word salad” from the beginning of Ms. Harris’ answer to a question about Israel and made her sound more coherent. The president says the edit could have cost him the election and that it caused him “mental anguish.” CBS has defended the editing, stating that it was not deceptive but rather done for time and concision purposes.
Effectively, Mr. Trump and CBS are saying the same thing about the edit – it was done to make Ms. Harris’ answer clearer. According to Mr. Trump, that is election interference, since at the time of the interview, Ms. Harris struggled to express herself clearly, and her avoidance of interviews with serious journalists had become a significant campaign issue. According to CBS, editing for concision is standard practice.
CBS and coastal legal observers have attacked the lawsuit as “meritless.” Lawyers for CBS Inc., who seem not to be acting in coordination with executives at their parent company, Paramount Global, have repeatedly tried and failed to get the lawsuit – being overseeing by a conservative, Trump-appointed judge in a Texas courtroom – dismissed (CBS is also trying, unsuccessfully so far, to get the lawsuit moved from Texas to more hospitable climes in the New York City area).
Paramount reportedly believes that settling Mr. Trump’s lawsuit is the key to winning the federal government’s approval of its merger with Skydance Media, which the Federal Communications Commission is currently holding up.
The deal is widely viewed as crucial to preserving one of Hollywood’s oldest studios and preventing mass layoffs. It would also give the family that controls Paramount, the Redstones, enough money to pay off its debts with about $1.8 billion left over.
The Trump-appointed chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, has stated that the president’s lawsuit is unrelated to the review of the Skydance deal. The FCC is conducting a news distortion investigation of the Harris interview, which Mr. Carr has said could factor into the review process.
Despite Mr. Carr’s vow that the CBS lawsuit and the Skydance review are unrelated, left-wing journalists, legal scholars, and lawmakers have warned that settling Mr. Trump’s lawsuit could be perceived as a bribe. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden penned a letter to the nonexecutive chairwoman of Paramount, Shari Redstone, warning that a settlement might violate federal anti-bribery laws.
Those warnings appear to have unsettled the executives at Paramount, who, according to multiple reports, have become concerned about the potential legal ramifications of a settlement.
A columnist for the New York Post, Charles Gasparino, reported last week that a $35 million settlement was “delayed” because Paramount’s executives “continued to fear a potential legal backlash.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have reportedly upped their financial demands, Mr. Gasparino wrote, as he noted the president’s team has been seeking as much as $50 million to settle.
As the process has unfolded, there has been speculation about how Paramount could attempt to diffuse the allegations of a bribe. One method would be to keep the settlement as low as possible, in line with what other companies have paid to resolve Mr. Trump’s lawsuits. In December, ABC News paid Mr. Trump $16 million to settle his defamation lawsuit after host George Stephanopoulos false and repeatedly badgered Rep. Nancy Mace by claiming the president had been “found liable for rape.”
Another way to try to raise doubts about the motivation for the settlement is for CBS News to issue an apology for the editing. It would not be unheard of for the network to apologize for its stories. In 2004, CBS News issued an on-air apology, delivered by Dan Rather, after it ran a since-debunked story attacking President Bush’s National Guard service.
Yet, in this case, an apology may backfire for CBS as Puck’s Eriq Gardner suggested that the producers at “60 Minutes” might file defamation lawsuits if they feel their network accused them of impropriety for editing they think was fine.
In its settlement with Mr. Trump, Disney apologized, subtly. An editor’s note was appended to the bottom of an ABCNews.com article about Mr. Stephanopoulos’s interview with Ms. Mace:
“Editor’s Note: ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
Mr. Stephanopoulos was clearly incorrect when he stated that Mr. Trump was found liable for “rape.” In the case of the “60 Minutes” lawsuit, CBS News insists it did nothing wrong.
Nevertheless, the lack of an apology, an admission of wrongdoing which would justify the settlement, could potentially put Ms. Redstone and the windfall her family would receive from the Skydance deal at risk.
Mr. Gardner suggested that an “ambitious” state attorney general or a “future Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez administration” might pursue civil forfeiture against the Redstones and seize the funds they received from the Skydance deal on the grounds that they were “derived from an allegedly corrupt act.”
“Civil forfeiture doesn’t require a conviction. At the very least, this deserves to be part of the conversation,” Mr. Gardner said.
Ms. Redstone has been identified as a major driver of the push to settle the president’s lawsuit. However, earlier this year, she reportedly recused herself from conversations about a settlement. She also announced she is battling thyroid cancer.
As the talks appear to be ongoing, Paramount is approaching a series of deadlines that could pressure it to reach a settlement agreement. The Skydance deal has a deadline of July 7 for approval. If the deal is not finalized by then, it would trigger one final deadline, October 7, after which point the deal could die.
If the deal fails to go through, media analysts have said it could trigger a “nightmare” situation for Ms. Redstone as she would likely be on the hook for a $400 million kill fee and would have debt obligations that would be difficult to raise funds for.
Entertainment journalists have speculated that the Skydance deal will be allowed to close. The chief executive of Skydance, David Ellison, is the son of the co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter and the fourth richest man in America. Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that the elder Ellison has had “multiple meetings” with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in “recent weeks.” Although the meetings were private, Mr. Byers pointed out that it is hard not to speculate about whether the two men discussed the Skydance deal.
Mr. Trump has also twice been seen near the Skydance chief executive at UFC events. The younger Mr. Ellison was a guest of Ari Emmanuel, the Hollywood superagent who owns the UFC. Earlier this month, Mr. Ellison and Mr. Trump were seen talking at a UFC event in New Jersey and shaking hands.
Last week, Mr. Trump expressed support for Mr. Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount.
While most observers think it is unlikely that the deal will fall apart, the ticking clock and potential “nightmare” situation should it fall through could put pressure on nervous Paramount executives to give in to Mr. Trump’s demands to settle his lawsuit and hopefully have the acquisition sail through the FCC’s review process before the last deadline.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
