Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Thursday against CBS, demanding $10 billion in damages over the network’s “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The suit was immediately ridiculed by First Amendment attorneys, who called it “frivolous and dangerous.”
In the complaint filed in US District Court in the Northern District of Texas, Trump’s legal counsel claimed CBS’ “60 Minutes” interview with Harris and the associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election in her favor.
The lawsuit also says Trump is seeking for the network to “publicly release the full, unedited transcript of the [interview].”
The US District Court in Northern Texas currently assigns cases in a way that any case filed in its Amarillo Division is automatically assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee.
It was unclear why the suit was filed in the Texas court but could be a case of “judge shopping,” the practice of strategically filing cases in courthouses where the lawsuits are almost guaranteed to be heard by judges perceived to be sympathetic to the litigants.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the show’s interview with Harris was grossly mis-edited by CBS at the direction of the campaign, and he has called for the network to “lose its license.”
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, 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,” the filing stated.
Trump’s legal counsel argued that “CBS’s misconduct was unconscionable because it amounts to a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.”
A spokesperson for CBS said that Trump’s claims against “60 Minutes” are false.
“The Interview was not doctored; and 60 MINUTES did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the question at issue. 60 MINUTES fairly presented the Interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it. The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it,” the spokesperson continued.
The lawsuit was slammed by prominent First Amendment attorneys, who called it meritless and absurd.
“This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media. The Supreme Court has made it crystal clear: the First Amendment leaves it to journalists – and not the courts, the government or candidates for office – to decide how to report the news,” said First Amendment attorney Charles Tobin of the law firm Ballard Spahr. Tobin is representing CNN in several ongoing matters.
Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer of Pentagon Papers fame, agreed, telling CNN: “The First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation. Mr. Trump may disagree with this or that coverage of him, but the First Amendment permits the press to decide how to cover elections, not the candidates seeking public office.”
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton professor of First Amendment law at Harvard Law School, put it more simply: “It’s ridiculous junk and should be mocked.”
Trump mentioned the lawsuit during his rally in Henderson, Nevada, Thursday, saying, “In honor of you, I just sued CBS today.”
CNN previously reported Trump backed out of a planned interview with “60 Minutes” in early October.
In a statement, the Trump campaign denied it had agreed to the interview.
CNN’s Kate Sullivan, Brian Stelter and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
