CBS News announced it would comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) demand that it turn over the transcript of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that is the subject of President Trump’s lawsuit against the company.
The FCC, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, sent a letter of inquiry to the news company on Wednesday, requesting the “full, unedited transcript and camera feeds.”
“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do,” a CBS News spokesman said in a statement on Friday.
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CBS News will reportedly comply with an F.C.C. request to turn over the footage and transcript of its “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Harris that a Trump lawsuit accused of being unlawfully edited. (AP Photo; Reuters Photo; Screenshots/CBS News)
The news comes as settlement discussions between President Donald Trump and the news outlet’s parent company, Paramount, are underway over Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against CBS News for how it handled its “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Harris last October.
Citing “three people with knowledge of the talks,” The New York Times reported that there is “no assurance” the two parties will reach a deal, but noted that “Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, strongly supports the effort to settle.”
The outlet added that Paramount executives believe that settling with Trump will increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger” with Skydance Media.
Ed Paltzik, an attorney for President Trump, said CBS needs to be held accountable.
“President Donald J. Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in deception and fake news accountable. CBS and its parent company Paramount deceived the American People by unlawfully tampering with their interview of Kamala Harris, and then hiding the transcript from the public in an attempt to save the failing, and now failed, Harris campaign, all in desperate commercial pursuit of increased profit and viewership.”
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President Trump and others were not pleased with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” over controversial edit of its interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. (Left: (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images), Center: Screenshot/60Minutes, Right: (Photo by Andy Manis/Getty Images))
Trump sued the news network in Oct. 2024, alleging “deceptive conduct” in how it produced the interview with Harris just ahead of the presidential election. The then-GOP candidate had accused the network of editing the exchange Harris had with “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker at the time.
According to Trump and his legal team, a longer, meandering answer that Harris gave to Whitaker during a promotional clip for the interview, appeared to be edited to a sharper, more condensed answer when the primetime interview aired.
Trump’s team demanded CBS News to release the full transcript of the interview that month, though the network refused, citing the First Amendment. The network insisted that “the interview was not doctored” and that the program “did not hide any part of the vice president’s answer to the question at issue.”
The refusal prompted Trump to sue for damages in a Texas federal court. The then-candidate’s attorneys said the suit comes in response to the network’s “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion calculated to confuse, deceive, and mislead the public.”
Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez criticized her agency for filing the inquiry this week. The New York Times quoted her, stating, “Let’s be clear, this is a retaliatory move by the government against broadcasters whose content or coverage is perceived to be unfavorable. It is designed to instill fear in broadcast stations and influence a network’s editorial decisions.”
CBS and Paramount reps did not immediately reply to Fox News Digital’s request for any additional comment.
Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood contributed to this report.
