Trump’s $10-Billion Lawsuit Against CBS Previews a Potential Scary Future for Journalism

After weeks of aggrieved posting about Vice President Kamala Harris’s October 7 interview with 60 Minutes, former president Donald Trump filed a $10-billion lawsuit against the program’s network on Thursday—alleging “unlawful acts of election and voter interference.” The lawsuit is frivolous, First Amendment attorneys agree. But it will appear before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an activist Trump appointee who has not historically allowed legal or intellectual rigor to get in the way of his ideology.

The lawsuit speaks to the hostile atmosphere American journalism will face under a second Trump administration: On both social media and the campaign trail, the GOP presidential nominee has threatened to jail journalists and called for major networks to lose their broadcast licenses. However, few networks have attracted Trump’s ire like CBS, which aired an interview with Harris earlier this month.

60 Minutes has traditionally interviewed both presidential candidates during election years, but Trump declined the program’s invitation because of concerns that its producers would fact-check him. Instead, the former president has fumed about the show on Truth Social, where he claimed, without evidence, that 60 Minutes doctored the Harris interview to make her appear smarter and more articulate. Attorneys for Trump made similar claims in court filings, arguing that CBS’s editing of the interview amounted to “a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 US Presidential Election.” Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton professor of First Amendment law at Harvard Law School, called the lawsuit “ridiculous junk [that] should be mocked” in comments to CNN. For its part, CBS has rigorously denied Trump’s allegations that edits to the Harris interview were excessive or unfair. In an October 20 statement, representatives for the network invited the former president to say it to their faces, so to speak: “If he would like to discuss the issues facing the nation and the Harris interview, we would be happy to have him on 60 Minutes.”

Notably, Trump’s lawyers filed their case in the Amarillo division of the US District Court in Northern Texas—on its face, an unusual choice for a candidate based in Florida and a network headquartered in New York. But the choice of venue guarantees the case will appear before Kacsmaryk, an outspoken conservative who has developed a national reputation for his sympathy to anti-abortion, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ plaintiffs.

The case also previews the potential fate of First Amendment rights in Trump’s second term. In addition to his ongoing feud with CBS, the former president last month called for ABC to lose its license after fact-checking him during a September debate, and last year demanded that NBC be investigated for “treason.” Trump has also promised to throw journalists, editors and publishers in jail for protecting confidential sources. “When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was,’” Trump said at a 2022 rally.

Press freedom organizations warn that Trump’s rhetoric has already made journalism more dangerous. A February survey of more than 600 journalists from across the US found that more than a third had been threatened with physical violence. Many described feeling particularly at risk while covering Trump rallies and “Stop the Steal” protests.