Paramount head Shari Redstone stands to clear billions of dollars once the merger with Skydance Media goes through. Paramount settling with Trump would also come after ABC News’ parent company Disney decided to pay the president $15 million (along with $1 million to his lawyers) to settle his lawsuit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos, who said Trump had been found “liable of rape” in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial. The jury had instead found the president liable for sexual abuse, though the judge noted there was no material difference between Trump’s actions and rape.

That settlement prompted First Amendment and press organizations to warn about the “chilling effect” Trump could have on the free press, adding that “there is concern that we are embarking on some scary times.”. Earlier this week, Facebook’s parent company Meta revealed that it agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle his complaint over the social media platform banning him following the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump’s account has since been restored, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been cozying up to Trump in recent months.

While there is no guarantee that Paramount will agree to a deal with Trump’s legal team, and it is unclear what a possible settlement would even entail, The New York Times reported that Paramount head Shari Redstone is fully behind settling. Redstone, whose father founded Paramount, would make billions of dollars off the merger with Skydance, which is backed by Trump-boosting billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.

In his lawsuit, which was filed in Texas to test the state’s law on false advertising, Trump accused 60 Minutes of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election in Harris’s favor. The complaint centers on the network airing a preview of Harris’s interview with Bill Whitaker on Face the Nation that included a different answer to a question than the version aired on 60 Minutes.

“To paper over Kamala's ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” Trump’s lawsuit alleged. “The interview was not doctored,” the network said at the time. “60 Minutes did not hide any part of Vice President Kamala Harris's answer to the question at issue. 60 Minutes fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it.”.

CBS has also argued that Trump has no standing in Texas to file the lawsuit and has filed motions to dismiss it. Meanwhile, legal and First Amendment experts have rejected the lawsuit as meritless and ridiculous. “The First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation,” famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said. “Mr. Trump may disagree with this or that coverage of him, but the First Amendment permits the press to decide how to cover elections, not the candidates seeking public office.”.