The Dangers of a Paramount Bribery Probe

Paramount was sued by President Donald Trump for alleged defamation in October 2024 (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg)

About the author: Brett M. Decker*, Ed.D. is an associate professor of business at Defiance College. He is a New York Times best-selling author and former senior vice president at the Export-Import Bank of the United States.*

Last week, Paramount Global and Donald Trump ended a high-profile, eight-month legal dispute over the president’s claim that the television and streaming company had defamed him. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said their $16 million settlement may be “bribery in plain sight” and demanded an investigation. This is exactly the kind of overreach that risks politicizing our justice system and sending a chilling message to every American business executive navigating high-stakes litigation.

In a lawsuit filed last year, Trump claimed Paramount’s network, CBS, doctored a 60 Minutes campaign-season interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris to make the Democratic candidate sound better. After weeks of mediation, Paramount agreed to pay $15 million toward the president’s future presidential library and $1 million to cover his and a co-plaintiffs’ legal fees. The agreement came just as Paramount seeks federal regulatory approval of a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media, an entertainment production company. Paramount, whose stock fell nearly 4% after the settlement, denies any wrongdoing.

To Warren and a few of her colleagues, however, the timing of the settlement is enough to warrant a federal bribery probe. As someone who has studied and taught business ethics, governance, and regulatory risk for decades, I disagree.

It is tempting to paint ordinary risk management decisions as sinister when they involve controversial political figures. But correlation isn’t causation, and Congress shouldn’t treat it as such.

Let’s take a step back. Do we want a system in which political actors reinterpret routine corporate legal settlements as potential crimes simply because they don’t like the recipient or the optics?

Managing legal exposure, protecting shareholders, and removing distractions that threaten a company’s long-term value are what boards and general counsel are paid to do. Corporations regularly weigh the cost of litigation against the cost of moving forward. Oftentimes, that means settling suits—even if the company is in the right. Settling avoids the uncertainties and reputational damage associated with lengthy, high-profile, and time-consuming legal battles. Especially those that involve inflammatory political narratives.

What Warren calls bribery is, in reality, a classic example of reputational risk mitigation. The legal fees alone for fighting a defamation suit brought by a president could easily surpass the settlement amount. George Cheeks, the CEO of CBS, said the settlement prevented the “high and unpredictable cost” of litigation. Add to that the nonstop public commentary Trump is generating around the case, and Paramount had every incentive to close the book.

It is wrong to imply that this payment was intended to influence a regulatory decision—without evidence of quid pro quo, coordination, or coercion. If continued in other cases similar to Paramount’s, these implications could begin to harm the credibility of real bribery investigations.

It is also worth remembering that Paramount has an interest in protecting its news division. Some journalists have criticized CBS’s decision, believing it to have folded under pressure from the president. Some CBS news executives have departed the network.

But the idea that the settlement somehow weakens press freedom is backward. By ending the litigation, Paramount removed a looming legal threat over 60 Minutes journalists and insulated the newsroom from further entanglement in partisan spectacle. In other words, what some call bribery may be more akin to firewalling.

Warren’s logic also creates an impossible standard: Any time a settlement happens in proximity to a regulatory process, companies may be forced to defend themselves against criminal allegations. Yet, overlap between legal disputes and regulatory proceedings is standard operating procedure for major corporations, which often have multiple legal, regulatory, and public procurement irons in the fire at once.

In May, Boeing simultaneously reached a multibillion-dollar criminal settlement over the 737 Max and worked with regulators to get its aircraft recertified. In 2023, Meta finalized a $725 million privacy settlement at the same time it was under antitrust scrutiny from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. And during AT&T’s merger with Time Warner Cable, both firms were fending off a federal antitrust challenge.

The lesson here is that in complex businesses, legal and regulatory processes don’t happen one at a time. They unfold concurrently.

Paramount did what companies are supposed to do in complex legal terrain: Resolve disputes, reduce risk, and move forward. If Congress starts punishing that, we will have far bigger problems than one defamation case.

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