Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris (ABC News).
Donald Trump this week filed a lawsuit against CBS News over the network’s October interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming the aired footage was deceptively “doctored” to “confuse, deceive, and mislead the public” to “tip the scales” in favor of Democrats, in what the former president alleges to be unlawful “election and voter interference.”
Trump, who canceled his own scheduled appearance on “60 Minutes,” has spent weeks railing about Harris’ appearance on the show.
Several legal experts have panned the suit as being frivolous and without merit.
The long-shot complaint was filed Thursday in the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division, where U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — an appointee of Trump — is the lone federal judge, and seeks an astounding $10 billion in damages. The choice of venue arguably appears to be an example of “judge shopping,” as Trump lives in Florida and CBS is based in New York.
Kacsmaryk has been a reliably conservative judge, previously blocking the Biden administration from ending former president’s “remain in Mexico” program and ordering the FDA to revoke approval of the widely used abortion drug mifepristone. Both rulings were later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The complaint comes less than a week before Trump and Harris square off in the 20204 presidential election and relies heavily on political talking points, accusing media organizations such as CBS of having “gone into overdrive” to help Democrats win. The filing repeatedly refers to Trump as “President Trump” while only referencing the vice president by her first name.
Trump’s allegations stem from two clips of Harris answering a question about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Trump baselessly claims that the network’s editing of the vice president’s response was an “unethical and unlawful” attempt to “sabotage a Republican presidential candidate.”
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” the lawsuit states. “Millions of Americans, including residents of Texas and this District, were confused and misled by the two doctored Interview versions.”
The network responded to the suit Thursday evening.
“Former President Trump’s repeated claims against 60 Minutes are false. The interview was not doctored,” CBS News said in a statement about the filing. “The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.”
Numerous legal experts have derided the lawsuit as little more than a political stunt.
National security attorney Mark Zaid, who previously represented a whistleblower connected to Trump’s first impeachment, said the lawsuit was on par with the former president’s penchant for weaponizing the legal system against his perceived enemies.
“This is such an abuse of the litigation system, which is consistent for the former President & many of his lawyers,” Zaid wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I have already sought to sanction some of them in other cases. Very possible the bar associations of jurisdiction ultimately weigh in.”
Robert Jensen, an emeritus professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, had a similar take.
“This is obviously a public relations stunt, an attempt to undermine the credibility of not only Harris and not only of CBS News, but of all traditional mainstream legacy media,” Jensen told The Washington Post. “Traditional mainstream legacy media reports critically about Trump’s deceptions, his coarse language, his lies, his abusive language, and so Trump is always trying to undermine the credibility of those journalists.”
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton professor of First Amendment law at Harvard Law School, was even more direct, telling CNN the filing was laughable.
“It’s ridiculous junk and should be mocked,” she told the network.
Noah Feldman, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law, told CBS News that the allegations amount to an “outrageous violation of First Amendment principles.”
“This is a complaint so ill grounded that it comes close to being sanctionable as frivolous,” Feldman said.
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