CBS parent company Paramount Global’s decision to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump not only rattled the media world — it prompted accusations of bribery from Democratic lawmakers.
“This could be bribery in plain sight,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) said in a statement.
“Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval,” posted Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on X. “When Democrats retake power, I’ll be first in line calling for federal charges.”
Accusations that Paramount executives bribed the president to ensure government approval of the company’s pending merger with Skydance media are just the latest example of elected Democrats crying foul at private sector companies kowtowing to the president. Earlier this year, a group of House Democrats claimed law firms’ deals to provide pro bono legal services to causes Trump favors, among other elements, could violate state and federal laws, including bribery statutes.
But legal experts say that the Paramount settlement and law firm deals don’t appear to rise to the level of criminal bribery.
“A lot of these things have a bribey feel to them,” said law professor and former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason. “These are the kind of things that feel corrupt… but the term ‘corruption’ is far broader than the term ‘criminal bribery.’”
Charging Paramount executives with criminal bribery would require evidence that they negotiated with Trump to ensure Federal Communications Commission approval of the merger in exchange for the settlement payment to Trump’s presidential library, experts say.
“All criminal bribery arrangements are abuses of power, but not all abuses of power are criminal bribery arrangements,” said Ryan Crosswell, a former public corruption prosecutor turned Democrat candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania.
It wouldn’t be enough for prosecutors to say Paramount executives decided to settle the case in the hopes that doing so would protect the merger or because they were trying to curry favor with Trump, Eliason said.
“You’d have to show a real explicit quid pro quo agreement,” he said. “Just the coincidence of timing is not enough.”
Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Warren and Wyden, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have been raising alarm about Paramount’s conduct since May, after “60 Minutes” said the company had begun more closely supervising the program’s news content. Trump sued CBS and Paramount in October of last year claiming that “60 Minutes” hurt his election chances by deceptively editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount’s lawyers called the lawsuit an affront to the First Amendment “without basis in law for fact” in court filings earlier this year. The company did not apologize to Trump as part of the settlement.
“Public calls for a federal criminal investigation into these facts seem to me to be more political than substantive,” said John Keller, former acting chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section.
A group of House Democrats voiced similar concerns earlier this year about Trump’s deals with nine major law firms that collectively agreed to provide nearly $1 billion in free legal work to causes supported by Trump in exchange for avoiding executive orders that punished disfavored firms and their clients. In letters to the firms, 16 House Democrats said they believe the agreements “may violate several state and federal criminal laws,” against bribery, extortion and fraud.
The deals with the law firms appear to be more like “political horsetrading” than bribery, according to Keller. “There’s a strong argument and defense that Trump negotiated that in his official capacity for something of value to the administration or the country,” he said.
Although criminal investigations into potential bribery may be unlikely, Democrats could launch inquiries into Trump’s deals if they retake the House or Senate in 2026, Crosswell said.
“All this is going on and the American people don’t have any understanding of whether there are arrangements being made or how all this is working out,” he added.
Paramount still may have other legal concerns. Last month, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a Paramount shareholder, hired prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell and declared their intent to file a derivative lawsuit on behalf of shareholders against the company should it go forward with the settlement. Lawyers for the group filed a supplemental information demand on Thursday seeking communications between Paramount directors regarding the settlement, according to a spokesperson.