Legal perils for CBS News are piling up as President Trump’s attorneys are suggesting that they may sue the network again, this time for defamation, even as Paramount, CBS’s parent company, is trying to settle the president’s original lawsuit. 

Mr. Trump sued CBS for $20 billion over its editing of Vice President Harris’s October 2024 interview with “60 Minutes,” which removed a “word salad” from the beginning of her answer to a question about Israel, making her sound coherent. CBS claims the edits are standard practice and it has tried, unsuccessfully, to get the case tossed out of court. Mr. Trump alleges the edit amounts to election interference and is suing under a consumer fraud statute.

Executives at Paramount are in talks to settle the president’s lawsuit — possibly for as much as $75 million — as they reportedly believe that is key to ensuring the Federal Communications Commission approves the crucial merger with Skydance Media. 

As tensions soared between CBS News and Paramount over Paramount’s intention to settle the suit, “60 Minutes” ran near-weekly negative stories about the Trump administration. A long-time media reporter at the Associated Press, David Bauder, praised the newsmagazine program for its “unflinching” coverage of the administration.

While the stories were seen by liberal journalists as the news division standing up to pressure from the president, the overtly partisan and one-sided nature of the coverage raised concerns at Paramount and irritated the president. An attorney for Mr. Trump, Ed Paltzik, told the Washington Free Beacon that a “60 Minutes” story focused on the Trump administration’s deals with major law firms was defamatory and could result in another lawsuit.

“During ongoing settlement talks, CBS News and Paramount aired a new, defamatory ’60 Minutes’ segment regarding President Trump’s legitimate and necessary executive orders addressing unlawful activity in the legal profession, including election interference and employment discrimination,” Mr. Paltzik told the Free Beacon.

He added, “CBS and Paramount’s attempts to subvert the legal process with lies and smears may necessitate additional corrective legal action, which President Trump reserves the right to pursue.”

The anti-Trump “60 Minutes” segment on law firms featured commentary by a prominent Trump opponent, attorney Marc Elias, who said that Mr. Trump is “trying to intimidate [law firms] the way in which a mob boss intimidates people in the neighborhood that he is seeking to either exact protection money from or engage in other nefarious conduct.”

“I mean, the fact is that these law firms are being told, ‘If you don’t play ball with us, maybe somethin’ really bad will happen to you,’” he said. 

Mr. Elias was the Clinton operative who engaged the Fusion GPS research firm that commissioned the notorious (and now discredited) “Steele Dossier” that accused Mr. Trump’s campaign of colluding with Russia to undermine Secretary Clinton. Mr. Trump issued executive orders denouncing Mr. Elias and also sanctioning his former law firm, Perkins Coie, which has a long history of partisan activities that favor Democrats. The “60 Minutes” segment did not mention Mr. Elias’s role with Fusion GPS or his strategic role in undermining the 2016 Trump campaign.

Instead, the “60 Minutes” segment portrayed Mr. Trump’s sanctioning of liberal law firms as undermining American democracy. Another attorney told “60 Minutes” that “our whole system of government is at stake” with the deals with the law firms.

The “60 Minutes” correspondent who narrated the story, Scott Pelley, told viewers it was “nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice.” Earlier this month, Mr. Pelley gave a fiery commencement address at Wake Forest University where he denounced the president in everything but name. He also criticized Paramount in an extraordinary on-camera monologue in April, on “60 Minutes,” after the forced resignation of the show’s executive producer Bill Owens. Mr. Pelley told millions of viewers that Mr. Owens was pushed out due to Paramount’s desire to close the Skydance transaction.

CBS News did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. Mr. Paltzik did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. 

For public figures to win defamation suits, they would have to show that the defendants went too far in their comments and demonstrated “actual malice.”

That has not stopped Mr. Trump from bringing defamation lawsuits in Florida that legal observers in New York and Washington argued were meritless. In December, after a Florida judge ruled multiple times in Mr. Trump’s favor, ABC News agreed to pay him $16 million after host George Stephanopoulos falsely said the president had been found liable for rape.

Media observers argued that ABC News could have won the case because of the high bar required to show “actual malice.” However, the settlement was seen as an attempt by ABC News’s parent company, Disney, to extend an olive branch to the president and avoid a potentially embarrassing discovery process and a drawn-out legal battle.

The status of Mr. Trump’s negotiations to settle his $20 billion lawsuit is not clear. It is believed that any settlement may require that the network issue an apology for the editing of the Harris interview. 

When Mr. Owens resigned under pressure last month, he said he had lost the ability to make independent decisions for the program. Mr. Trump’s lawsuit was clearly a factor, but also Mr. Owens had come under criticism for one-sided and disrespectful “60 Minutes” segments on the Israel-Hamas war, which portrayed Israel in a negative light. The former CEO of CBS News and Stations, Wendy McMahon, also was forced out.

Ms. McMahon and Mr. Owens had reportedly been arguing against a settlement and an apology for the edits. With their departure, a veteran media reporter, Matthew Belloni, predicted that settlement could come as soon as this week or next week. 

The threat of a defamation lawsuit against CBS from Mr. Trump’s attorneys over the coverage by “60 Minutes” — which was seen as the show thumbing its nose at the president — could be an attempt to extract a higher settlement price. The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount executives had agreed to pay up to $20 million to resolve the lawsuit, but the president has been expected to seek a much higher amount. 

Regardless of whether Mr. Trump sues the network for defamation, it is likely that settling his $20 billion lawsuit will lead to more problems for CBS News and Paramount.

On Friday, a press freedom organization, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that it “sent a letter to Paramount Chair Shari Redstone to put her and other Paramount executives on notice that it plans to file a shareholder’s derivative lawsuit should Paramount settle with Trump, and to demand that Paramount preserve all records that may be relevant to its claims. FPF is a Paramount Global shareholder.”

The director of advocacy for the FPF, Seth Stern, said in a statement, “A settlement of Trump’s meritless lawsuit may well be a thinly veiled effort to launder bribes through the court system. Not only would it tank CBS’s reputation but, as three U.S. senators recently explained, it could put Paramount executives at risk of breaking the law.”

He added the group hopes Paramount will “reconsider the dangerous path it appears to be contemplating.”

The prospect of shareholder lawsuits over a settlement or potential investigations into any deal is reportedly making Paramount executives nervous about the idea of a settlement. The New York Post’s Charles Gasparino reported that Paramount’s board members are concerned that their directors and officers liability insurance would not cover legal expenses for civil suits related to the settlement of Mr. Trump’s lawsuit — as such insurance policies typically do not cover cases involving allegations of bribery — or criminal investigations.