US Senator demands bribery probe into Trump-Paramount US$16mil settlement
By Afp
WASHINGTON: A US senator renewed calls Wednesday for a bribery investigation into Paramount following its US$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 US$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 US$8 billion merger with the entertainment company Skydance, which needs federal government approval.
ders, a co-signatory of Warren's letter to Paramount, accused the company of emboldening Trump in his attacks on the media for the sake of its bottom line.
"It's pretty obvious why Paramount chose to surrender to Trump," he said in a statement.
"The Redstone family is in line to receive US$2.4 billion from the sale of Paramount to Skydance, but they can only receive this money if the Trump administration approves this deal."
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."
Source : us-senator-demands-bribery-probe-trump-paramount-us16mil-settlement
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