Paramount Global has settled its lawsuit with Donald Trump, with the company agreeing to pay the sitting president $16 million (USD).
The settlement, announced at close to midnight Tuesday (July 2) on the East Coast, clears a path for the media company’s long-delayed
merger with Skydance Media. Paramount said the $16 million payment to Trump will go toward his presidential library and legal fees.
Fox Business pundit Charlie Gasparino
tweeted Wednesday morning that the PSA commitments added an additional $14 million to the total payout, however, multiple sources familiar with the mediation process have said that there was no formal agreement for an extra payment for the PSAs.
“Contrary to some news reports or media speculation, Paramount’s settlement with President Trump does not include PSAs or anything related to PSAs,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. “Paramount has no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement proposed by the mediator and accepted by the parties. The material terms of the settlement agreement in principle are those disclosed by us yesterday.”
In a court filing on Wednesday, attorneys for Trump and Paramount informed the judge of the settlement. “The parties are working diligently to prepare and execute a mutually agreeable final Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release, followed by Plaintiffs’ dismissal of the action with prejudice,” they said in the joint filing.
Under the agreement, Paramount will make a payment but does not have to make a formal apology for its handling of a 60 Minutes interview last fall. Trump sued CBS News and its parent company, Paramount, for $20 billion over the editing of the interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent in the presidential election.
Paramount said in a statement that it agreed that 60 Minutes in the future will release transcripts of interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after those interviews have aired. The release of transcripts will be “subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns,” the company said.
“This lawsuit is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process,” the company said, reiterating its previous statement on the matter. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case.”
The FCC review of the transaction had been held up by the suit, though agency chair Brendan Carr has insisted multiple times that the regulatory process and lawsuit are separate. Now, the review can proceed, including a “news distortion” complaint filed against CBS News in the 60 Minutes matter.
Lawmakers, regulatory experts and shareholders have indicated in recent weeks that Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and others involved in any settlement could be liable for bribery. They claim that a monetary settlement would essentially mean the deal participants are effectively paying the government for approval of the merger. Those theories, which have taken root in the context of similar Trump crusades against Disney, NBCUniversal and other media companies (some resulting in payouts to Trump), could well be tested in courts in the coming months.
Trump’s legal team said, “With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit. CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle. President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American People as he continues on his singular mission to Make America Great Again.” How they said that with a straight face we may never know.
The settlement figure is identical to the amount that Disney paid in December to settle a Trump defamation lawsuit against ABC News over comments that George Stephanopoulos made on This Week. Like Disney’s settlement, the Paramount sum will be made to Trump’s future presidential library and includes legal costs.
This case, though, was not a libel claim, but a consumer one.
At the heart of the case was one question asked during Bill Whitaker’s interview with Harris.
He asked her why Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not listening to the Biden administration.
Harris replied, “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. And we’re not going to stop doing that. 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.”
The second part of Harris’ answer was shown on the 60 Minutes broadcast on October 7. The first part was shown one day earlier, in a preview segment of Face the Nation. That edit was confirmed when 60 Minutes released the transcript and video of the complete interview in February.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in October, initially claimed that the network deceptively edited the interview to make Harris look better in advance of the election. The lawsuit claimed a violation of Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a consumer law typically invoked in false advertising claims.
After he won the election, and CBS’ legal team argued that his claim was moot, Trump filed a revised lawsuit that claimed that he was harmed because the interview unfairly diverted traffic from his own media properties, including the ironically titled Truth Social.
Many legal observers said that Trump’s claim was meritless, a shakedown as he held the levers of power. The sum that Trump was seeking exceeded the value of Paramount-Skydance and of all money spent in the 2024 election cycle. In legal filings, CBS’ team also said they had broad First Amendment protection for a news broadcast and news judgment, while they challenged the president’s choice of venue for the case — a federal court division in Amarillo, TX where the sole judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, is a Trump appointee who has given favorable rulings on a number of case from those on the right. Trump’s team had claimed that the Face the Nation preview amounted to an advertisement. They also contended that the president suffered “mental anguish” from the segment, even though he had declined to participate in the 60 Minutes broadcast.
Within CBS News, there has been months of consternation over a pending settlement, along with some second guessing over the way that it has all been handled. Some staffers say that 60 Minutes should have released the interview transcript much earlier, potentially nipping it in the bud. As the 60 Minutes lawsuit hung over the merger, Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, resigned, saying he was no longer allowed to make “independent decisions” about the show. Several weeks later, Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS News and Stations, also was out. McMahon, who had defended 60 Minutes, said it was “clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”
Scott Pelley, correspondent for 60 Minutes, warned last month that a settlement and an apology could be “very damaging” to the reputation of CBS and Paramount. “I think many of the law firms that made deals with the White House are at this very moment regretting it. That doesn’t look like their finest hour,” Pelley told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, a fellow correspondent on 60 Minutes. Pelley was referring to law firms that reached agreements with Trump after he sought to cut them off from access to government facilities and restricted their work with contractors.
Following the news of the settlement, one CBS News staffer said, “People are not surprised but disappointed. There is hope that if the Skydance deal goes through, that can be a fresh start.”
The Paramount-Skydance deal was formally proposed nearly a year ago, following a months-long period when Redstone evaluated a range of potential suitors. At various times, Sony Pictures (in tandem with private equity firm Apollo), Barry Diller and Byron Allen expressed interest, and an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. also put in a bid during the 45-day “go-shop” period last summer. By and large, though, Skydance had the inside track given its longtime relationship with Paramount Pictures as a co-finance partner. Unlike some buyers, who were said to be ready to dismantle the company’s asset portfolio and potentially unload the fabled Melrose studio lot, Skydance and its CEO, David Ellison, are seen as the most film-friendly buyers of the bunch.
Surprisingly, though, given the close ties between the merger participants, the lack of overlap in the companies’ assets and the bullish outlook for Merger & Acquisition (M&A) deals at the beginning of 2025, the closing process has been an agonizingly protracted one. Paramount and Skydance had maintained the deal would be wrapped up during the first half of 2025 and already had to exercise their option for a 90-day extension of the contractual merger deadline.
The main culprit in the delay was the Trump suit. As the case wound through the legal and mediation process, the FCC’s approval of the deal remained the lone hurdle. Because Paramount is a controlled company, the merger does not require shareholder approval, though the company’s annual shareholder meeting will take place Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, Trump’s efforts to use the power of his office against the media are not over. In recent days, he and his allies have threatened investigations and even prosecutions of CNN, including for its reporting on a leaked preliminary intelligence report on the U.S. strikes on Iran, and for its story on a crowdsourced app that allows users to report spottings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents within a five-mile radius.
