With five days to go until Election Day, former President Donald Trump on Thursday filed his long-threatened lawsuit against CBS News over the network’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes” earlier this month.
The lawsuit alleges that the network committed “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” to benefit Harris because the network aired two different answers to a question posed by correspondent Bill Whitaker about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Millions of Americans … were confused and misled by the two doctored Interview versions,” the lawsuit reads.
Trump’s legal team requested a full, unedited transcript of the interview, but an attorney for CBS News said last week that there was “no legal basis” to meet the former president’s demand, which they said was based on a “faulty premise.”
“’60 Minutes’ did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the question at issue,” wrote Gayle Sproul, CBS News’ senior vice president, legal affairs, adding: “It begs logic to argue that ’60 Minutes’ hid the first part of the Vice President’s answer to the question. It did not. The public is aware of that part of her answer because ’60 Minutes’ itself publicly distributed it by providing it to ‘Face the Nation’ for promotional purposes and posting it on X and other ’60 Minutes’-branded social media for the same reason.”
“The Interview was edited for time with the aim of allowing the public to hear from the Vice President on as many subjects as possible in a 21-minute interview,” Sproul wrote. “Editing is a necessity for all broadcasters to enable them to present the news in the time available, and that is what 60 Minutes did here, as it does with its other reports.”
“The First Amendment fiercely protects these editorial judgments,” Sproul added. “For that reason, no private right of action exists here and I note that you do not identify one. Nor is there any legal basis for your demand that we provide you with the unedited transcript of the Interview, which we decline to do
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Texas, though the two plaintiffs, CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive, are based in New York and Delaware, respectively.
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, responded to news of the lawsuit on social media by quoting the vice president: “‘Donald Trump is stewing over his enemies list, while I’m focused on a to-do list for the American people.’”