President Donald Trump expanded his lawsuit against CBS News for making controversial edits to an interview with former Vice Kamala Harris after the network released new information regarding the media appearance.
Earlier this week, months after Trump said CBS News’s edits to its 60 Minutes interview with Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign amounted to election interference, the Federal Communications Commission ordered the network to release the full unedited transcript of the interview as well as raw video footage of the entire segment.
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After reviewing the new information, Trump’s legal team on Saturday amended the president’s lawsuit to double the amount he claims he is owed for “deceptive” editing from the original $10 billion to $20 billion. Multiple excerpts from the unedited transcript are also included in the revised lawsuit, to bolster the president’s argument that CBS unfairly shielded Harris by not releasing potentially unflattering footage that could have damaged her chances of defeating Trump.
“Once Defendants finally released the unedited version of the Interview, it became apparent that they had engaged in gross broadcast distortion cover-up and manipulated not only Harris’s Reply about Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the Interview in its entirety,” the filing states.
In several newly released portions of the interview, the lawsuit alleges lengthy “word salad” answers from Harris that made no sense were unfairly left out.
“There are a variety of factors that relate to what we have seen globally and what we are not immune from at our own border, in terms of what we have seen in terms of surge of immigration and irregular migration. And there are solutions at hand, but we’ve gotta have leaders who are solution-oriented, which we’ve been and are and I am, going forward. Instead of leaders who want to make it a problem they can run on,” the former vice president said in one instance mentioned in the lawsuit.
“We are people who have ambition and aspiration, and dreams and optimism and hope. If you look at the character of who we are, how we have achieved the strength that we have achieved, I believe in large part it is because of our character and our belief in the promise of America. And I’m running for President because I want to do everything that is possible to create an opportunity for people to achieve those goals those ambitions and those dreams,” Harris said in another clip previously withheld from the public.
On Saturday, Trump’s legal team also amended the lawsuit to include Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) as a plaintiff. The president had originally filed the suit in Texas, leading to CBS’s motion to dismiss the case on the basis that Trump does not reside in the Lone Star state.
“Representative Jackson is a consumer of broadcast and digital news media content in this State, District, and Division, including the broadcast and digital news media content from Defendants at issue in this action, and he has thus been injured by Defendants’ conduct alleged herein,” the revised complaint reads.
The revised lawsuit also addressed Trump’s concerns he was harmed as the owner of his Truth Social platform by CBS’s editing. The president’s legal team added a new claim citing the federal Lanham Act to argue he was the target of “unfair competition.”
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“President Trump was harmed as a competitor in the news media industry and suffered actual damages in an amount to be determined upon trial of this action,” the complaint states. “Viewership was improperly diverted to Defendants’ media platforms, resulting in lower consumer engagement, advertising revenues and profits” for Truth Social and Trump’s other media ventures,” because of the edits, the suit alleges.
Trump initially sued CBS in October 2024, citing the network’s edit of Harris’s answer about Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
