(CN) — Donald Trump sued CBS Thursday, claiming $10 billion in damages and accusing CBS News of airing two different versions of the answer Vice President Kamala Harris gave to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview on “60 Minutes” earlier this month.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, the former president says Harris responded in the interview that was shown on “Face the Nation,” with what he calls a “word salad.” The version of the same interview shown the next day on “60 Minutes,” has Harris giving a succinct answer to the question, according to Trump.
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” Trump says.
CBS has previously denied Trump’s accusation in an Oct. 20 statement.
“60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes,” CBS said at the time. “Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point.”
In his complaint, Trump says that CBS’s explanation that the interview was edited for time “defies common sense and logic.” According to the former president, inclusion of the “unintelligible version” of Harris’ answer would have added only a few seconds, but instead, he claims CBS doctored it to such an extent that the meaning of the answer was fundamentally altered.
The former president also includes an accusation that CBS has refused to provide a complete and accurate transcript of the interview in response to a previous complaint filed by the Center for American Rights to the Federal Communications Commission.
“CBS’s concealment of the transcript is proof of its corrupt, partisan motives,” he wrote. “CBS’s misconduct goes even further than the deceptive editing and concealment of the transcript. An additional problem arises from CBS’s deception: it is reasonable to infer that other parts of the Interview were also deceptively edited.”
Representatives of CBS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s lawsuit.
Trump filed the complaint in Amarillo rather than in Dallas, where the main courthouse of the Northern District of Texas is located. There’s only one federal judge assigned to the Amarillo courthouse, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee.
With the presidential election just days away, Trump and Harris are still in a neck and neck race, with the Republican and Democratic parties filing lawsuits to eke out advantages in swing states that can determine the outcome.
Trump accuses CBS of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act and seeks $10 billion in compensatory damages as well as an injunction against CBS’s purported deceptive acts.
He’s represented by Edward Paltzik of Bochner PLLC in New York among other attorneys.