Trump sued CBS over an interview with Harris on 60 Minutes. Lawyers 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 for a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The lawsuit was immediately condemned by First Amendment lawyers, who called it “frivolous and dangerous.”

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Trump’s legal counsel said the CBS “60 Minutes” interview with Harris and related programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and election interference” aimed at “inducing the public into delusion.” and try to tip the scales” in the presidential election in their favor.

The suit also says Trump is seeking the network’s “public release of the full, unedited transcript (of the interview).”

The U.S. District Court in North Texas currently allocates cases so that any case brought in its Amarillo branch is automatically assigned to Judge Matthew Kaczmarik, a Trump appointee.

It was unclear why the lawsuit was filed in a Texas court, but it could be a case of “judge picking,” the practice of strategically filing cases in courthouses where the lawsuits are almost guaranteed to be heard by judges believed to be sympathetic to the plaintiffs.

Trump has repeatedly said the Harris interview was grossly edited by CBS at the direction of the campaign and called for the network to “lose its license.”

“To cover up Kamala’s weakness for word salad, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from judgmental reporting to deceitful, misleading news manipulation,” the document states.

Trump’s legal counsel said that “CBS’s misconduct was unconscionable as it amounted to a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 US presidential election.”

A CBS spokesman said Trump’s claims against “60 Minutes” are false.

“The interview was not faked; and 60 MINUTES did not hide any part of the vice president’s answer to the question. 60 MINUTES presented the interview honestly in order to inform the viewing audience, not mislead them. The lawsuit Trump filed today against CBS is completely without merit, and we will vigorously defend against it,” the spokesperson continued.

The lawsuit was immediately criticized by prominent First Amendment lawyers, who called it baseless and absurd.

“This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the media. The Supreme Court has made clear: The First Amendment leaves it up to journalists, not the courts, the government or candidates for office, to decide how to report the news,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin of the law firm Ballard Spahr. .

Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer of Pentagon Papers fame, agreed, telling CNN: “The First Amendment was designed to protect the press from precisely these types of lawsuits. Mr. Trump may disagree with certain coverage of him, but the First Amendment allows the press to decide how to cover an 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: “This is ridiculous nonsense that should be ridiculed.”

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

CNN previously reported that Trump pulled out of a scheduled 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.