Trump sends formal request to CBS to release transcript of Harris interview ahead of ‘potential litigation’

President Trump is stepping up pressure on CBS News to release the full transcript of Vice President Harris’ interview with “60 Minutes” after the network said it intentionally edited a response to make it “more succinct,” but denied any deception.

Trump’s lawyers are demanding that CBS News “immediately provide and release the complete, unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview” and preserve communications and edits of the interview “in anticipation of possible litigation.” In a letter to CBS Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs Gayle Sproul, Trump’s lawyer Edward Paltzik gave the network 48 hours to respond to the requests.

Mr. Paltzik wrote: “The open question is whether any such published transcript is original or whether it has also been falsified, edited or manipulated in any way useful to the failure of Kamala Harris’s campaign. The October 20 statement clearly admits that changes were made to make Harris’ responses more “succinct.”

“CBS and its 60 Minutes producers intentionally misled the public by releasing a slickly edited interview transcript, while choosing to post other portions online. Such manipulative editing was intended to sow confusion among the electorate about the abilities, intelligence and attractiveness of Vice President Kamala Harris,” Mr. Paltzik said. “News organizations like CBS have a responsibility to accurately represent the truth of events, not twist an interview to try to make their preferred candidate appear coherent and decisive, which is certainly not the case with Harris. Because of CBS’s actions, the public cannot distinguish which Kamala Harris they see: the candidate or a behind-the-scenes editor’s puppet.”

His letter insists that “the executives and producers” of the network “are unquestionably aware that the purpose behind editing the interview was to confuse the electorate and present the vice president in a better light than would reveal a complete, unedited transcript.”

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at Georgetown University, said in a blog post about Trump’s threat to sue the network that such a case was “legally without merit” and would “fail probably “.

“The media are allowed to engage in such fabrications. Indeed, prejudice in itself does not generally give rise to prosecution. … There were difficult moments when Whitaker pushed Harris to give more than succinct answers,” Mr. Turley said. “Harassing legal threats destroy any moral high ground for Trump. It’s also completely unnecessary.

CBS News did not respond to a request for comment.

The network has faced increasing pressure to share the transcript since it released different versions of Ms. Harris’ interview. In an excerpt from the Oct. 6 interview on “Face the Nation,” the vice president was asked why Prime Minister Netanyahu does not appear to be listening to U.S. officials’ advice and concerns about how Israel is waging its war. against Hamas. .

She responded with what critics called “word salad,” saying: “The work we have done has resulted in a number of movements in this region by Israel that have been strongly motivated by, or the outcome of, of, many things, including our politics. advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.

Yet on the prime-time show “60 Minutes” the next evening, when asked the same question about Mr. Netanyahu, the “word salad” was gone. Ms. Harris answered the same question on Israel more coherently, saying: “We are not going to stop doing what is necessary to make the United States clear on our position on the need to end this war. »

A third montage also surfaced, posted by the “Face the Nation” account on In the third version, the vice president spoke about U.S. efforts to help Israel defend itself against attacks from Iran. She said it was “imperative for America to do what we can to enable Israel to defend itself against these types of attacks.”

Trump called the edits to the interview “the worst scandal” in the “history of broadcasting.” In an interview Friday with radio host Dan Bongino, the former president said, “They didn’t edit. They took his whole…paragraph…and it was a long word salad, they say.

“They were just words, disjointed, horrible words. So they took it out, and they put in another statement that she made two pages later, they put it in. And no one would have noticed the difference, and they got caught,” he added.

Trump said he might sue the network for “election interference” and that “60 Minutes” should be “taken off the air.”

In a statement released Sunday, 60 Minutes admitted to editing Ms. Harris’ interview to make her response “more succinct.” However, he denied altering the interview in a misleading way and later criticized Trump for not sitting down for an interview with CBS.

CBS News’ refusal to release the full transcript of the interview led to it being the subject of a complaint filed with the Federal Communications Commission, which governs television broadcasting. The Center for American Rights alleged in its filing with the FCC that CBS News engaged in “significant and intentional distortion of information” in editing Ms. Harris’ interview.

The CAR complaint recognizes that this “kind of editing is normal in the context of a news magazine type program” like “60 Minutes”. However, he says, “CBS crosses a line when its production reaches the point of transforming an interviewee’s response to the point that it becomes a fundamentally different answer.” »

Rather than seeking to censor CBS News or revoke its broadcast license, CAR’s complaint asks that the FCC force it to release the transcript of its interview with Ms. Harris.

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington told Fox News Digital that he doesn’t think CAR’s complaint is “on its face ridiculous.” Mr. Simington, a Trump appointee, also said it would not be “inappropriate for the commission to handle this” because it has a history of following up on complaints about distortion of information.