When Donald J. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet.
Now Mr. Trump is back in the White House, and many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
Settlement discussions between representatives of Paramount and Mr. Trump are now underway, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. There is no assurance, though, that they will result in a deal, and it is unclear what the terms of any such deal might include.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, strongly supports the effort to settle, according to two people with knowledge of her thinking. Ms. Redstone stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount, the media empire founded by her father Sumner Redstone, in a deal with Skydance, an entertainment company backed by the billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.
A settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation.
It could also cause an uproar within CBS News and among the “60 Minutes” staff. Journalists at the network have expressed deep concern about the notion of their parent company settling litigation that they consider tantamount to a politician’s standard-issue gripes about a news organization’s editorial judgment, according to several people familiar with internal discussions….
Donald Trump may have found a new way to funnel cash into his pockets while serving as president—by turning litigation into a lucrative business model.
It started with ABC News, which agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit by paying $15 million to Trump’s future foundation and another $1 million to cover his legal fees.
Then Meta followed suit, forking over $25 million to Trump’s presidential library to resolve a 2021 lawsuit he filed against the company.
Now, Paramount—the parent company of CBS—is reportedly negotiating a settlement in a lawsuit Trump brought over what he claims was a “deceptively edited” 60 Minutes interview.
There are also reports that X wants to settle a lawsuit Trump brought when the social network was still called Twitter.
The pattern raises an obvious question: Has Trump effectively created a legal mechanism to extract money from corporations under the guise of litigation?
If these settlements serve as a backdoor way for companies to curry favor with the president, they look an awful lot like bribery—except with the thin veneer of legality….