Former President Donald Trump has initiated a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS over a recent interview featuring Kamala Harris that was broadcasted on “60 Minutes.”
The 19-page legal complaint submitted on Thursday claims that the network engaged in “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” by selectively editing several of Harris’s answers to interview questions. Along with the substantial financial demand, Trump’s legal team is seeking a court order for CBS to make the unedited interview available in its entirety.
Trump has expressed his outrage over the “60 Minutes” segment throughout this month, accusing the network of wrongdoing after it aired two different segments of an answer concerning the Gaza conflict on both “Face The Nation” and their main newsmagazine program. In the complaint, his lawyers assert that CBS manipulated the vice president’s “word salad” in a way that would negatively affect Trump’s electoral prospects.
“CBS’s alteration of the ’60 Minutes’ interview resulted in damage to President Trump’s fundraising and support levels amounting to several billion dollars, especially in Texas,” claimed Trump’s lawyers in the lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Texas.
A spokesperson for CBS informed Reuters, “The lawsuit Trump has filed today against CBS is entirely without merit and we will defend against it vigorously.”
The legal filing describes Harris’s rise to the top of the presidential ticket as an “unprecedented and anti-democratic political coup” and includes Trump campaign complaints regarding the “Democratic Party establishment” and “legacy media organizations.”
This lawsuit follows Trump’s recent remarks at a rally, where he stated his intentions to challenge CBS’s broadcasting rights in the United States, suggesting the network “should be taken off the air.”
Prior to the lawsuit, CBS had already stated that Trump’s complaints lacked validity, issuing a strongly worded letter last week asserting that he has no grounds for a lawsuit or to request a transcript of their interview with Harris. The network’s vice president of legal affairs conveyed to Trump’s representatives that “the interview was not manipulated” and that the network “did not conceal any part of the Vice President’s response to the question in question.”
