Overview
- House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin filed a complaint to CBS News ombudsman Kenneth Weinstein alleging President Trump exerted improper influence over edits to his recent 60 Minutes interview.
- Raskin requested CBS’s editorial standards, all communications about the interview, and a briefing on how the ombudsman defines improper bias versus legitimate editorial judgment.
- CBS broadcast 28 minutes from a roughly 90-minute sit-down and posted a 73-minute online cut plus a full transcript that showed omitted passages, including an exchange over a pardon for Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Trump’s boast about a $16 million settlement.
- Raskin linked his inquiry to Paramount’s 2024 settlement with Trump and to merger concessions that created the ombudsman post, criticizing Weinstein’s reporting line to Paramount executives as atypical for newsroom independence.
- CBS News declined to comment in the latest coverage, and Paramount has previously said the Trump settlement was separate from the Skydance transaction and FCC approval process.