Former President Donald Trump has taken legal action against CBS News, alleging that the network's editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris was deceitful. Trump's lawsuit specifically focuses on two clips from the October interview, where he claims that the editing was intended to assist his opponent and mislead the public in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. CBS News has denied these allegations, stating that the interview was not doctored.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, seeks at least $10 billion in damages and accuses CBS News of deceptive manipulation of news. Furthermore, the legal complaint attempts to use a Texas statute meant for preventing misleading advertising, a move that legal scholars have criticized as a misapplication of the law. Despite the network's explanation that the differing edits were due to time constraints and content considerations, Trump's lawsuit alleges that millions of Americans were misled by the edited interview versions.
Legal experts, including First Amendment scholar Geoffrey R. Stone and constitutional law expert Noah Feldman, have voiced their concerns over the lawsuit, with Feldman calling it an "outrageous violation of First Amendment principles." Trump's history of filing lawsuits against media outlets, with past cases against CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, is noted in the context of this latest legal action.