Paramount Pays Trump $16 Million to End ‘60 Minutes’ Suit, Stirring Bribery Claims

Paramount Global has agreed to pay President Donald Trump $16 million to settle his private lawsuit alleging that CBS’s “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an October 2024 interview with then–Vice President Kamala Harris. The accord, reached late Tuesday, ends a case in which Trump had sought as much as $20 billion in damages. Paramount did not apologize or concede wrongdoing, but it pledged that the news magazine will publish full transcripts of future interviews with U.S. presidential candidates, a provision newsroom staff have begun referring to as the “Trump Rule.” The payment will be directed to Trump’s planned presidential library, according to statements from both parties.

Paramount said the settlement avoids protracted litigation costs and allows it to focus on closing its roughly $8 billion sale to Skydance Media, a transaction that must be cleared by the Federal Communications Commission. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has already requested unedited footage of the Harris interview as part of his review, and industry observers see the settlement as an effort to ease regulatory scrutiny.

Journalists and press-freedom advocates condemned the deal as a capitulation to political pressure. Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute called the payout “a permanent monument to Paramount’s surrender,” while the Writers Guild of America East said the company was “currying favor” with the administration. Lawmakers were equally scathing: Senator Bernie Sanders termed the agreement “a dark day for independent journalism,” and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden urged investigations into what they called a potential bribe tied to merger approval.

Inside CBS News, President Tom Cibrowski told staff the matter was “behind us” and emphasized the absence of an apology, but newsroom employees expressed mixed feelings of relief and dismay. The settlement follows similar payments Trump extracted from ABC last December and from Meta earlier this year, deepening concerns among media executives that future coverage critical of the White House could trigger costly legal or regulatory reprisals.