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“This lawsuit is an affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact,” writes Thomas Riney, a lawyer for CBS, in the filing.
By Winston Cho
Without a settlement in sight, Paramount Global is looking to dismiss President Trump’s lawsuit against its CBS News unit from a federal court in Texas, which has become a hot spot for legal battles advancing conservative legal causes.
CBS is incorporated in New York, but Trump’s legal team chose to sue in the Northern District of Texas, prompting concerns that he’s cherry-picking judges by filing the lawsuit at a court where a sympathetic judge is likely to oversee the case. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who’s overseeing the litigation, was nominated to his position by Trump in 2017 and has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2012. In his five years on the bench, he’s issued rulings to block Biden-era rules regarding immigration, health care and discrimination. He’s the only judge in the Amarillo division of the court, making it a near certainty that he’s assigned cases filed at that location.
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“This lawsuit is an affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact,” writes Thomas Riney, a lawyer for CBS, in the filing. Trump seeks to “punish a news organization for constitutionally protected editorial judgments they do not like.”
Last month, Trump revised his lawsuit to add Republican U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, his former doctor who lives in Texas, as a plaintiff to keep the case in Texas federal court. The case revolves around allegations that CBS News aired a “heavily tampered interview” with former Vice President Kamala Harris to help her in the election by editing certain answers in a way that misled consumers. This manipulation of the interview, Trump alleged, constitutes a violation of Texas’ consumer protection law covering deceptive advertising and the unfair competition prong of the Lanham Act, a trademark law.
In Thursday’s filing, CBS argues that the inclusion of Jackson in the lawsuit is a “vain effort to manufacture a connection to this District.” It stresses that Jackson has spent the majority of the last decade based in Washington, D.C. and that the complaint doesn’t sufficiently allege that he watched or suffered an injury from the 60 Minutes segment at the center of the legal battle in the state.
CBS also says that the lawsuit doesn’t belong in Texas because the 60 Minutes segment, which was focused on the national presidential election, didn’t target Texans more than residents of other states.
“The interview of Vice President Kamala Harris, excerpts of which aired on Face the Nation and 60 Minutes, was not filmed, edited, or produced in Texas, nor was Texas in any way the subject of the interview,” the filing states. “If this district has personal jurisdiction merely because CBS programs are broadcast nationwide, so too does every district court in the country. That is not the law.”
If the lawsuit isn’t dismissed, CBS claims that it should be moved to federal court in New York.
Paramount declined to comment.
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