Trump sues CBS for $10B over Harris's '60 Minutes' interview

Former President Trump is suing CBS News over a "60 Minutes" interview it broadcast with Vice President Harris earlier this month that he and his allies have claimed was edited to cast her in a positive light.

The lawsuit, which seeks $10 billion in damages and was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas alleges the network engaged in "partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion."

"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 reads.

In a statement to The Hill late Thursday, a spokesperson for the network said the former president's "repeated claims against 60 Minutes are false."

"The Interview was not doctored; and 60 Minutes did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the question at issue. 60 Minutes fairly presented the Interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it," the spokesperson said. "The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it."

Trump and his allies have railed against CBS for weeks over the wide-ranging interview with Harris, pointing to an answer the vice president gave to a question about the war in Gaza that was not included in the full broadcast and instead published by the outlet online.

It is standard practice for broadcast outlets to edit questions and answers during interviews with major newsmakers for clarity, accuracy and time.

Trump initially agreed to sit for a similar interview with "60 Minutes," the network said at the time it broadcast its conversation with Harris, but the former president backed out after the program said it would fact-check him.

Trump first teased a potential lawsuit against CBS earlier this month, saying the network "should lose their license and take '60 Minutes' off the air.”

CBS is one of several mainstream news networks Trump has threatened to use the federal government to crack down on because of coverage that is critical of him.

Trump's lawsuit was filed in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, which guaranteed it would be assigned to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. His single-judge division has become an attractive forum for Republican-led lawsuits challenging Biden administration actions.

Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, last year suspended the federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone before he was overturned by the Supreme Court and in 2021 reinstated the Trump "Remain in Mexico" asylum policy.

Zach Schonfeld contributed

Story updated at 7:47 p.m. EDT