Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, may be on the verge of a settlement deal with President Trump, much to the chagrin of its own news employees.
On Monday lawyers for the president and the media company said in a court filing that the two sides are “engaged in good faith, advanced, settlement negotiations,” and asked to hold off on all suit-related court proceedings until Thursday.
A source familiar with the matter said Paramount is motivated to resolve the legal dispute this week in part because the company’s annual shareholder meeting is coming up on Wednesday. A Paramount spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The meeting is an informal deadline of sorts because Paramount is nominating three new members to its board of directors, and if a settlement is not inked in time, the new directors will have to get involved.
The extraordinary legal dispute with a sitting president stems from last October’s “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Trump claimed the segment deliberately mis-edited at the behest of the Democratic campaign and filed a lawsuit alleging election interference.
Legal experts derided the lawsuit as frivolous and laughable, and CBS defended the newsmagazine and its editorial judgment on First Amendment grounds. The complete transcript of the Harris interview confirmed that “60 Minutes” engaged in normal editing processes, not what Trump called “election-threatening” misconduct.
Under normal circumstances CBS would likely succeed in getting the lawsuit thrown out. But the network’s parent company has been in a precarious position since Trump retook office. Paramount has been trying to complete a merger with Skydance Media, and it needs Trump administration approval.
Thus the company’s lawyers have been trying to settle the case, mimicking Disney’s $16 million settlement last December that resolved a Trump lawsuit against ABC News.
CBS News employees are alternatively aghast at the prospect of paying Trump and resigned to the inevitability of a corporate deal.
“I know there’s going to be a settlement. I know there’s going to be some money exchanged,” veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl told The New Yorker last month.
Numerous Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about the potential settlement. Sen. Bernie Sanders even did so on the CBS airwaves, speaking on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” about why Paramount should not cave to Trump.
“To concede that you did something wrong” at “60 Minutes” would be a travesty, Sanders told Colbert, arguing that the Paramount case is part of a broader context: “He’s going after universities. He’s going after law firms who have represented clients that he didn’t like. This is what authoritarianism is about.”
Amid the settlement talks, which have involved a court-selected mediator, CBS has continued to defend itself in court filings. Last week CBS lawyers said the “chilling effect of Plaintiffs’ meritless assault on the First Amendment compels dismissal now.”
A phalanx of press freedom groups have agreed. But Trump filed his suit in the US District Court in Northern Texas, which meant that it was automatically assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee. Critics have suggested that it was a case of “judge shopping,” the practice of strategically filing cases in courthouses where suits are almost guaranteed to be heard by judges perceived to be sympathetic to the litigants.
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