CBS News responded to legal threats made by former President Donald Trump, refusing to hand over an unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and denying that the program “doctored” her responses.
Gayle Sproul, CBS News’ senior vice president for legal affairs, responded to a letter sent by an attorney representing the former president on Wednesday, insisting that the lawyers did not “identify” a legal basis for a lawsuit, according to a letter obtained by CNN and Variety.
“60 MINUTES fairly presented the Interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead It,” Sproul wrote in a segment published by the trade publication. “Indeed, your contention that 60 MINUTES acted nefariously is entirely unfounded. Instead, the Interview was edited for time with the aim of allowing the public to hear from the Vice President on as many subjects as possible in a 21-minute interview.”
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Harris’ interview with the long-running newsmagazine on October 7 has become a sore point for the former president, who declined to participate in an interview earlier this month.
After the Harris interview aired, Trump claimed the program “doctored” a section of the interview, citing an answer to a question in a promo for the show was different to the one that was broadcast.
60 Minutes issued a statement on Sunday calling the former president’s claims about the editing “false.”
“When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point,” the newsmagazine stated. “The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.”
However, Trump doubled down after this statement, sending a letter through an attorney to CBS demanding the full, unedited transcript of Harris’ interview.
“President Trump is rightly alleging that CBS’s ‘doctoring’ of Harris’s answers on 60 Minutes was deceptive,” Trump’s lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik wrote in a letter addressed to Sproul. “The allegation is not simply that CBS was dishonest; it is that CBS deceived viewers into thinking Harris’ answer was, at the very least—as CBS put it—more ‘succinct’ than the word salad it actually was.”
Sproul responded directly to some of these claims, insisting that “the interview was not doctored” and denying that the program misrepresented the vice president’s answers.
But Trump has continued to discuss legal action against the network, again asking supporters at a rally in Duluth, Georgia on Wednesday night: “should I sue them? Should I sue? Should we sue 60 Minutes and CBS?”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement sent to the Daily Beast: “As President Trump stated-CBS committed the worst wrongdoing in broadcast history when they maliciously and deceptively doctored Lyin’ Kamala Harris’ pathetic 60 Minutes interview.”
Sproul and CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Additionally, a legal watchdog group called the Center for American Rights also filed an FCC complaint against the network last week, accusing CBS of “engaging in significant and intentional news distortion” and again demanding a transcript of the interview.
In light of the complaint, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the commission’s senior Republican, also called on CBS to release the interview’s transcript. “I don’t think this needs to be a federal case because I think CBS should release it,” Carr told Fox Business on Tuesday. “Then that would inoculate, entirely, CBS from that FCC complaint.”
