Paramount agrees to a $16 million settlement in Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News

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Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Donald Trump’s $2 billion defamation loss lawsuit against CBS News division, and could clear the obstacle as Shari Redstone attempts to advance the sale of his family’s company to Skydance.

The payments will be made to Trump’s future presidential library, marking the second mark since the November election that he has earned damages from major news organizations. In December, Disney-owned ABC paid $15 million to Trump’s Presidential Library to settle the defamation lawsuit.

The announcement was to set up three new board members as Paramount prepares to hold its annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday. Paramount and Skydance are facing a deadline to complete the merger by July 7th. Companies automatically have 90 days extensions as needed.

The merger agreement faces months of scrutiny from Brendan Kerr, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Communications Commission, who needs to approve the transaction. Kerr denied that Trump’s CBS lawsuit had affected his deliberations regarding the Paramount Ski Dance deal.

Paramount said in a statement that the Trump lawsuit’s settlement is “completely separate from the Skydun Transaction and the FCC approval process and is unrelated.” Both sides are expected to formalise the settlement agreement over the next 10 days.

Paramount noted that the settlement did not include an apology or a statement of regret.

The company’s willingness to settle the lawsuit has sparked concern among supporters of free speech that Trump’s case did not stand up to the challenge under the First Amendment protections of the press.

Trump allegedly denigrated CBS’s 60-minute news program by deliberately editing some of his interviews with then-President Vies Kamala Harris, claiming it was deceptive.

The story of a potential settlement angered CBS journalists and prompted the network’s chief executive and longtime executive producer to step down for 60 minutes.

In a court filing on June 23, CBS lawyers called the Trump lawsuit “merciless,” accusing the president of attempting to “avert the First Amendment Principles of the Bedrock,” and granted freedom of speech.

In May, a settlement debate prompted Senator Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to express “serious concern” that Paramount is “involved in inappropriate conduct” by easing the content of the program to win approval for the Skydance deal.

“If Paramount officials make these concessions in a quiz professional arrangement to affect President Trump or other administration officials, they may be breaking the law,” the senator warned in a letter. “Under federal bribery law, it is illegal to fraudulently give civil servants something of value to affect their official duties.”

Redstone rejected himself from board deliberations on how to resolve the cases that have been subject to months of mediation between Paramount and Trump’s lawyers.

This incident was a hindrance for Redstone. Redstone is trying to stop wind dropping from a $8.4 billion sale to Skydance, a small Hollywood studio founded by David Ellison with support from his father’s co-founder, Larry Ellison.

In the lawsuit, Trump argued that CBS “treates on a scale in favor of Democrats” by airing two different edits Harris gave to the question during the 2024 election.

Trump accused him of compiling the 60-minute segment of drawing “papers surrounding the weaknesses of Kamala’s ‘word salad’.”

According to CBS, the national program used long clips of Harris’ answers and saved time for 60 minutes using shorter edits from the same interview. This is a common practice in broadcast journalism.

The company said it will release a 60-minute transcript of future interviews with US presidential candidates after the show airs.

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