Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle '60 Minutes' Lawsuit

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31. Maddow Blog-Paramount to pay $16 million to settle with Trump in CBS News '60 Minutes' lawsui

The question was less about whether Paramount would settle with Trump, and more about how much his lawyers would accept.

Paramount executives were worried it might look like they were bribing Trump by giving him millions of dollars to settle a baseless lawsuit based on a bizarre conspiracy theory.

Now that the settlement is official, they were right to be concerned. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-07-02T12:17:20.550Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/paramount-settles-trump-cbs-news-60-minutes-lawsuit-rcna203667

After months of legal negotiations and wrangling, the question was less about whether Paramount would settle with Donald Trump, and more about how much the president’s lawyers would agree to. As NBC News reported, that question now has an answer.

Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump that had alleged an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last year with Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent for the presidency, was deceptively edited. The agreement in principle, proposed by a mediator, includes plaintiffs’ fees and costs and — except for fees and costs — will be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, Paramount Global said in a statement late Tuesday.

The company did not apologize as part of the deal or admit any fault. Nevertheless, the plaintiff wasted little time in gloating: In a written statement from a presidential spokesperson, Team Trump boasted that the settlement “holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.”.....

In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported last week, “Over the past few months, Paramount leaders have been wrestling with how to pay to settle the lawsuit without exposing directors and officers to liability in potential future shareholder litigation or to criminal charges for bribing a public official.”

This dynamic was not lost on Capitol Hill observers. “Paramount appears to be trying to settle a lawsuit that it has assessed as ‘completely without merit,’” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden said in a recent letter to Chairwoman Shari Redstone. “Under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act. If Paramount officials make these concessions in a quid pro quo arrangement to influence President Trump or other Administration officials, they may be breaking the law.”

Now that the settlement is official, and Paramount is paying Team Trump to settle a case that appears baseless, it’s likely these questions are poised to grow considerably louder.

This ongoing debacle has already cost the network — over the last couple of months, the head of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 Minutes” have both stepped down — and those costs now also include a steep price tag.