An 11-figure lawsuit and merger effort didn’t stop “60 Minutes” from rolling out the red carpet for attorneys in the latest salvo against President Donald Trump’s administration.
(Video Credit: CBS News)
Roughly a week after CBS News’ Scott Pelley spoke out against parent company Paramount over content supervision, the reporter returned with a bevy of lawyers to cry foul about the commander-in-chief. Specifically, 14 minutes of the program were dedicated to criticizing Trump’s executive orders against firms to claim “fear” was “now running through our system of justice.”
In particular, Pelley brought on Marc Elias, formerly of Perkins Coie, who argued, “Donald Trump is the walking embodiment of everything that is wrong with the American political system.”
“And so when Donald Trump says that I am unethical or that I am undermining his vision of America, I say, ‘Boy, I must be doin’ something right,'” he went on before later adding the orders were akin to “the way in which a mob boss intimidates people in the neighborhood that he is seeking to either exact protection money from or engage in other nefarious conduct.”
“I mean,” expressed Elias, “the fact is that these law firms are being told if you don’t play ball with us, maybe something really bad will happen to you. ”
The “60 Minutes” segment came after the Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of Perkins Coie that Trump’s executive order that suspended security clearances and prohibited the federal government from funding contractors represented by the firm was “unconstitutional.”
In justifying the order, the president contended the firm had “worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification,” on top of claims it “racially discriminates against its own attorneys and staff, and against applicants.”
Elias, who, as part of his work on behalf of the Democratic Party, was general counsel for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, filed suit for the Democrats in April over the president’s efforts to maintain election integrity in part by preventing non-citizens from voting.
Also featured on the program was Brenna Frey, formerly an attorney from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, which made an agreement with the administration.
“I think the message it sends to the country is power is what matters. If you have power, you can exercise that power however you want. And if that’s true, why have a legal system at all? Why have law firms or lawyers at all,” she told Pelley as she explained that she’d quit the firm because, “The law firm is tacitly saying, we’ll listen to the administration, we won’t fight in court. If we won’t fight over this, what else won’t we fight over in court against the federal government?”
When the host said to John Keker, “You’re not suggesting that the president’s running a protection racket,” the attorney responded, “I am. I’m suggesting that he is violating the rule that says, ‘you can’t offer a thing of value in return for an official act.’ That happens to be the definition of bribery. Anybody else who came to Washington and said I will give you $100 million of free legal services if you do this for me would be convicted of a bribe.”
The latest from “60 Minutes” came as Pelley criticized Paramount after owner Shari Redstone requested CBS News’ chief executive avoid running stories critical of the president during the merger effort with Skydance Media.
“Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” he said. “None of our stories has been blocked, but…” Bill Owens, who’d resigned as “60 Minutes” executive producer, “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
Of note amid claims of “honest journalism,” as CBS and Paramount face a $20 billion lawsuit from Trump over the editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election, that same installment received an Emmy Award nomination for, of all things, “outstanding edited interview.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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