Why Trump’s lawsuit against CBS is transparently ridiculous

In the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election, no issue has animated Donald Trump more than his obsession with CBS' “60 Minutes.”

To briefly recap, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with the news program in early October; some of her answers were edited for time — a standard practice in broadcast journalism — and the former Republican president has spent nearly every day since pretending that this is some kind of scandal.

Trump has, among other things, called for CBS to lose its broadcasting license, asked for “60 Minutes” to be pulled from the air, labeled the show and the network a “threat to democracy,” described the imaginary controversy as “the single biggest scandal in broadcast history,” and even characterized the non-story as “totally illegal.”

The network has patiently explained that the claims are baseless and that the editing process was routine and fair. Trump’s lawyers nevertheless recently wrote to CBS News, threatening litigation. Evidently, they weren’t kidding. Reuters reported:

The GOP candidate is seeking — I kid you not — $10 billion in damages.

“Former President Trump’s repeated claims against 60 Minutes are false,” a CBS News spokesperson said. “The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.”

As a legal matter, the idea that CBS News engaged in “election interference” is difficult to take seriously. The former president recently wrote on his online platform that he has “PROOF” to substantiate his bizarre claims, but to date, he hasn’t shared any such evidence.

As a political matter, the Harris campaign has invested quite a bit of time and energy telling voters that Trump is overly fixated, not on problem-solving, but on vengeance and retaliation. The Republican shifting his focus to CBS in the race’s final days seems to reinforce the Democratic framing: Trump has an enemies list, while Harris has a to-do list.

But my favorite part of this story is the fact that the lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas. Why, pray tell, would the former president’s lawyers file the case there? I’m glad you asked.

CBS isn’t located in Texas. Trump doesn’t live in Texas. The Trump campaign isn’t located in Texas. The “60 Minutes” interview with Harris didn't happen in Texas. Nothing about this story has anything to do with Texas.

But the Republican’s attorneys filed the case there anyway, and The Washington Post ran a report that helped explain the reason: “The long-shot claim was filed in the Northern District of Texas courthouse where Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee, is the sole judge.”

To be sure, the official explanation for filing the litigation in the Northern District of Texas is that the “60 Minutes” interview was aired by the CBS affiliate in the area, where some Texans presumably saw it.

But there’s no reason to play games here. Trump’s lawyers wanted to get this case in front of a highly controversial Trump-appointed judge, who’s quickly become the go-to jurist for GOP plaintiffs looking for a legal ally on the bench.

It was, for example, Kacsmaryk who took it upon himself to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone last year, relying in large part on highly dubious studies — which have since been retracted. (The ruling was ultimately overturned for procedural reasons.)

When a federal judge blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a new rule in Texas that would require firearms dealers to run background checks on buyers at gun shows, that was Kacsmaryk, too.

When a conservative group wanted to challenge energy efficiency standards, they figured it’d be a good idea to file the case in Kacsmaryk’s district. When a conservative group wanted to challenge the administration’s protections for LGBTQ+ students, they did the same thing.

It’s as if Trump’s lawyers decided to offer the legal and political world another case study for why reforms are necessary to curtail judge shopping.