Paramount Global Seeks to Dismiss Donald Trump’s $20 Billion Lawsuit

CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Global, has filed a pair of motions seeking to dismiss President Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against the news organization.

The president filed the lawsuit in October 2024  accusing CBS News of aligning itself with “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference.” Trump was specifically referring to edits made during a 60 Minutes interview with  former Vice President Kamala Harris in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

In the first motion, Paramount Global called the president’s lawsuit  an “affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact.” The media conglomerate added that Trump  seeks to “punish a news organization for constitutionally protected editorial judgments they do not like.”  

The second motion states that the First Amendment protects CBS News’ editorial judgement, which is considered non-commercial speech and thus lies outside the scope of the Lanham Act and the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

The motions to dismiss were filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where Trump’s lawsuit was initially filed. That court has come across as providing favorable verdicts for conservatives in the past. 

CBS News publicly released an unedited transcript of its 60 Minutes interview in February after the Trump-appointed FCC head Brendan Carr lodged an official request for the unedited transcript as well as the camera feeds. 

“[The transcript is] consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” CBS News noted on its website.  

In its lawsuit, which was initially pegged at $10 billion, Trump’s legal team alluded to CBS News engaging in “deceitful” editing, saying: “CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news.”

Paramount Global is in the final stages of completing its merger with Skydance Media. Paramount head Shari Redstone is reportedly eager to see the lawsuit settled to ensure that the deal proceeds.

In a New York Times report, Owens stood by 60 Minutes’ work, saying: “The company knows I will not apologize for anything we have done.”