Former President Donald Trump brought a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against CBS News for “deceitful, deceptive manipulation” after the network made controversial edits to an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump filed the $10 billion lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Thursday, arguing that 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.”
“President Trump brings this action to redress the immense harm caused to him, to his campaign, and to tens of millions of citizens in Texas and across America by CBS’s deceptive broadcasting conduct,” the lawsuit states.
Trump’s lawsuit was filed in an Amarillo federal court, which guaranteed it would be assigned to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. His single-judge division has become an attractive forum for Republican-led lawsuits challenging Biden administration actions.
Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, last year suspended the federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone before he was overturned by the Supreme Court and in 2021 reinstated the Trump “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy.
The former president commented on the lawsuit during a packed rally in Henderson, Nevada, Thursday evening.
“In honor of you, I just sued CBS today because of 60 Minutes. You know why I sued them? Because she was on, and it was called election interference fraud,” Trump said before adding, “They asked her a question, she gave an answer as though she was one of the dumber people in the history of our country, certainly the dumbest vice president, and would be beyond the dumbest president.”
CBS responded by calling the lawsuit “completely without merit.”
“Former President Trump’s repeated claims against 60 Minutes are false,” a CBS News spokesperson said. “The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.”
The news comes after CBS released two different versions of Harris answering a question about Israel during a 60 Minutes interview earlier this month.
“We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end,” Harris said in the prime-time special that aired in full on Oct. 7.
But in a teaser clip aired ahead of the interview’s full release, Harris offered what the Trump campaign has described as a “word salad” response.
“Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,” the vice president said.
“Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, make her look better,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal,” he continued.
As the network refuses to heed Trump’s calls for it to release the full and unedited transcript of the original interview, the former president has called for the network’s broadcasting licenses to be revoked.
He has argued that the network’s edits amounted to election interference.
“I’ve seen where answers are sort of juggled around. That’s not good either, but a little tiny. But to take the whole thing out and to take another answer from a totally different question and a totally different part and move it in, and they got caught. And they don’t want to show us any papers because they might have done it with many other answers,” Trump said during his Nevada rally.
The Harris campaign has distanced itself from CBS’s edits, telling Variety, “We do not control CBS’s production decisions.”
CBS has come under fire under multiple fronts in recent days. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently complained that it had unfairly cut out portions of his interview on the network.
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