Trump sues CBS over ’60 Minutes’ interview with Harris. Legal experts call it ‘frivolous and dangerous’

CNN
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Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS Broadcasting Inc. on Thursday. and CBS Interactive Inc., seeking $10 billion in damages over the network’s “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The lawsuit was immediately condemned by First Amendment lawyers, who called it “frivolous and dangerous.”

In the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Trump’s legal counsel alleged that CBS’s “60 Minutes” interview with Harris and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of electioneering and voter interference” designed to ‘to mislead the public’. and trying to tip the balance of the presidential election in her favor.

The lawsuit also says Trump is seeking the network to “publicly release the complete, unedited transcript of the (interview).”

The U.S. District Court in North Texas currently assigns cases so that any case filed in the Amarillo Division is automatically assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee.

It was unclear why the lawsuit was filed in Texas court, but it could be a case of “judge shopping,” the practice of strategically filing cases in courthouses where the lawsuits are virtually guaranteed to be heard by judges acting as are considered sympathetic to the litigants.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the show’s interview with Harris was seriously misedited by CBS at the campaign’s direction, and he has called for the network to “lose its license.”

“To cover up Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from exercising judgment in reporting to deceptive, deceptive manipulation of news,” the filing said.

Trump’s legal counsel argued that “CBS’s misconduct was unconscionable because it amounts to a blatant attempt to interfere in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”

A CBS spokesperson said Trump’s claims to “60 Minutes” are false.

“The interview was not manipulated; and 60 MINUTES did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the question in question. 60 MINUTES presented the interview honestly to inform and not mislead the viewing audience. The lawsuit Trump filed today against CBS is completely baseless and we will vigorously defend against it,” the spokesperson continued.

The lawsuit was immediately dismissed by prominent First Amendment lawyers, 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 — not the courts, the government, or candidates for office — to decide how the news is reported,” said First Amendment attorney Charles Tobin the Ballard Spahr law firm. .

Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment attorney on the Pentagon Papers, agreed, telling CNN: “The First Amendment was created to protect the press from such lawsuits. Mr. Trump may not agree with this or that reporting about him, but the First Amendment allows the press to decide how to cover the election, 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 is ridiculous garbage and should be mocked.”

Trump mentioned the lawsuit Thursday during his rally in Henderson, Nevada, saying, “In your honor, today I just sued CBS.”

CNN previously reported that Trump withdrew from a planned interview with “60 Minutes” in early October.

In a statement, the Trump campaign denied agreeing to the interview.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.