WASHINGTON: A US senator renewed calls Wednesday for a bribery investigation into Paramount following its $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over a lawsuit the entertainment giant initially described as meritless.
The president had sued the CBS News parent company for $20 billion, claiming the “60 Minutes” programme had deceptively edited an interview with his 2024 election rival Kamala Harris in her favour.
The suit is described by Trump’s critics as part of a broader assault on press freedom that has seen him bar The Associated Press from the Oval Office and sue other media organisations over their coverage.
Paramount nevertheless entered into mediation in a bid to placate Trump, as it seeks to close its $8 billion merger with the entertainment company Skydance, which needs federal government approval.
“With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration’s approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat.
“Paramount has refused to provide answers to a congressional inquiry, so I’m calling for a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken.”
Warren was among three senators who wrote to Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone in May with bribery concerns over the company’s efforts to settle the suit, calling for a congressional probe.
Republicans control both chambers of Congress, limiting the power of Democrats to investigate or compel answers from witnesses.
The senators’ letter came after CBS News head Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens quit over Paramount’s handling of the showdown with Trump.
‘Paramount’s surrender’
The company initially called the suit “completely without merit” and sought to have it dismissed.
It said in a statement to AFP that the $16 million would go toward Trump’s future presidential library rather than to him personally, and added that the settlement did not include an apology.
“Companies often settle litigation to avoid the high and somewhat unpredictable costs of legal defence, the risk of an adverse judgment that could result in significant financial or reputational damage, and the disruption to business operations that prolonged legal battles can cause,” it added.
But Warren said the company should be “ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism” in the face of the Trump administration’s “sheer corruption.”
Trump accused CBS of airing two different snippets from the same answer that Harris, then vice president, gave about Israel, to help her in her election campaign.
Legal experts have argued that the lawsuit would have been an easy victory in court for CBS, which made public an unedited transcript of the Harris interview.
And media watchers have pointed out that Trump routinely takes part in interviews that are edited for all manner of reasons, often in his favour.
ABC News, owned by Disney, agreed to donate a similar amount to the Trump presidential library in its own settlement with the president late last year.
Trump had contended that star ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed him by asserting that Trump had been found liable for rape in a civil lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, when he was found liable for sexual abuse.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the Paramount settlement “a sad day for press freedom.”
“This was a frivolous lawsuit, and the payment being described as a ‘settlement’ bears no relation to Paramount’s actual legal exposure in the case, which was negligible,” he said in a statement.
“Paramount should have fought this extortionate lawsuit in court, and it would have prevailed. Now Trump’s presidential library will be a permanent monument to Paramount’s surrender, a continual reminder of its failure to defend freedoms that are essential to our democracy.”
