How Citizens United Paved the Way to the Paramount Settlement
And Failed to Protect Free Speech
In the wake of Paramount’s agreement to pay $16 million to settle the President’s claims against it,1 politicians and legal commentators have debated whether the settlement amounted to criminal bribery.2 The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United is the reason for this legal debate, and not a broader discussion about whether overpaying to settle a politician’s frivolous claims is unacceptable corruption or the appearance of corruption. That decision sought to protect free speech by allowing unlimited spending for the benefit of politicians. But the world that Citizens United created has less free speech, not more.
As a refresher, Citizens United held that spending money on political speech never has any corrosive or corrupting influence worth regulating, regardless of amount, except in cases of explicit “quid pro quo” exchanges of expenditures for political action such as a vote on legislation.3 This extremely narrow definition of “corruption” meant that unless the political spending at issue amounted to criminal bribery, the government could not regulate it. After Citizens United, federal and state statutes regulating political activity fell like dominoes because they regulated conduct that fell short of criminal bribery.
Legally and culturally, Citizens United ushered in a world in which unlimited spending to influence government was acceptable at first, then normal, then openly celebrated. The deal with Paramount is “corrupt” in the traditional sense that a business is giving a large sum of money to a government official (or entities under his control), for no apparent reason other than to win current or future favors. But the deal may not amount to provable criminal bribery, so the mega-rich participants on both sides signed off. Their reasonable assessment that they will never face any consequences for demanding and paying large amounts to settle frivolous claims stems in part from Citizens United’s ruling that anything less than an explicit quid pro quo is not corruption, as a matter of law. If the government could regulate the giving of enormous gifts to elected officeholders (or their libraries) under Supreme Court precedent, this deal probably never would have happened.
When Paramount pays $16 million in exchange for dismissal of Trump’s claims, it is giving nearly $16 million directly to Trump because the claims were worth almost nothing. If a politician sold me a $50 bottle of wine for $16 million, I would be giving a gift to the politician, not getting a bottle of wine worth $16 million. But the valuation plainly matters, which requires analysis of the claims.
Here’s the recap: Just a few days before the November 2024 election, Trump sued CBS Broadcasting for editing an interview with Kamala Harris and broadcasting the edited clips, including during its flagship news program, 60 Minutes.4 Paramount owns CBS.
According to the original pre-election complaint, editing the Harris interview was deceptive because it masked her inability to speak coherently.5 Specifically, the complaint alleges that the CBS interviewer, Bill Whitaker, asked a question and Harris responded with a lengthy word-salad, which the CBS editors later replaced with a shorter, clearer version of the same response.6
Here's the transcript of a clip of the unedited interview, according to the complaint:
Whitaker: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.
Harris: Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.
But after editing, the interview clip appeared as follows:
Whitaker: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.
Harris: We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.
As indicated, these answers are not identical, but they are expressions of the same basic message: the Biden Administration was talking with Israel about the war in Gaza. And contrary to theme of the complaint, both of Harris’s responses are equally vague. CBS did not deceive anyone about Harris’s viewpoints or her ability to speak when it substituted a shorter version of the full answer for the unabridged one, and it did not injure Trump in any way. For these and many other reasons, Trump’s chances of prevailing here were zero.
The complaint frames the allegations against CBS as election interference, presumably as prelude to arguing that the election was stolen if he had lost.7 He did not lose, but the case remained. In the meantime, Paramount had sought approval from the FCC for a merger with Skydance.8 Just ask yourself this: would Paramount have paid $16 million to settle this case if Trump were not President?
The frivolous claims against Paramount are unfortunately complex in ways that discourage public engagement and provide some measure of plausible deniability to the settlement participants. The complexity means that only trained professionals and people with time on their hands can navigate these schemes with high levels of certainty. Most people have to rely on the experts to assess whether the claims against Paramount are frivolous. This wouldn’t be necessary if the key facts could be explained in three seconds, as in “Trump agreed to trade regulatory approval for cash.” The situation here is not that.
The Citizens United majority did not like the complexity involved in regulating corruption that is anything other than straightforward criminal bribery. This was because the same people who are capable of untangling the complexity of a highly-legalistic shakedown are also capable of using that complexity against citizens in unfair ways. Just as a corrupt political scheme could avoid detection or punishment because it is too complex, an overzealous prosecutor or overly-partisan regulator could exploit complexity to impose unwarranted penalties. In both situations, it may be hard to tell whether mistakes were made, whether of omission or commission.
The Citizens United majority wanted to protect speech by shielding complicated political relationships from government regulation. The excruciating irony, fifteen years later, is that redefining corruption to mean only simple bribery enables the government to attack free speech. Trump’s lawsuits against media outlets, including Paramount, discourage speech by threatening speakers with financial and reputation harm—and massive overpayments to make those frivolous suits go away only further empowers him to attack other speakers. In short, in holding that the government could regulate only outright bribery, Citizens United affirmatively contributed to a climate of corruption that enables the government to stamp out free speech.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/03/paramount-law-bribery-democrats-00439546; https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-calls-for-investigation-into-paramount-settlement-with-trump; https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/stretching-the-bribery-statute-to-paramount-deal-will-backfire.
Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 357-360 (2010).
Trump v. CBS Broadcasting, Inc., N.D. Tex. Case No. 2:24-cv-00236-Z (ECF No. 1, Oct. 31, 2024).
Complaint ¶¶ 56-61.
Complaint ¶¶ 35-36, 48.
Complaint ¶¶ 1, 10.