The ranking members of the House Judiciary and Energy and Commerce committees are launching an investigation into Skydance’s $8 billion merger with Paramount and whether the $16 million settlement with Donald Trump constituted a “bribe,” the committees announced Thursday.
The Hill first reported on the launch of the congressional probe and a letter sent to Paramount leadership, which The Independent has also reviewed.
In the letter sent to new Paramount CEO David Ellison on Wednesday night, E&C ranking member Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. and Rep. Jamie Raskin, Judiciary’s top Democrat, called on Paramount leadership to provide documents and correspondence related to the deal and its approval process with the Trump administration.
The merger, which was approved late last month by the FCC and officially closed on August 7, came after a politically strained and fraught process that included the previous Paramount leadership paying Trump to settle a lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview that CBS News’ own lawyers said was “without merit.”
Additionally, after the settlement was announced, the president claimed that he had reached a “side deal” with Ellison to air up to $20 million worth of pro-Trump advertisements and programming on CBS once Skydance took over the company. While the previous Paramount leadership denied any knowledge of any secret agreement, Ellison has remained mum about the matter.
Days before the merger was approved by Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Commission chief Brendan Carr, Skydance agreed to install an ombudsman for two years to conduct a “comprehensive review” of CBS News and review “complaints of bias.” The company also agreed to eliminate all diversity hiring practices.
On top of that, Paramount announced just before the administration approved the merger that it was canceling the long-running late show hosted by outspoken Trump critic Stephen Colbert, even though it was the top-rated program in late-night. Trump and Carr immediately celebrated the news of Colbert’s cancellation. Paramount, meanwhile, has insisted the move was purely for financial reasons, while company sources claimed the show lost $40 million a year.
“In the days and weeks leading up to government approval of the deal, Paramount also agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Trump’s meritless lawsuit related to benign edits of an episode of ‘60 Minutes’—a standard editorial practice—which the FCC also investigated without any legitimate regulatory basis,” the letter to Ellison read. “The settlement raises significant concerns that Donald Trump demanded and Paramount paid an illegal bribe—a $16 million payment to the President in exchange for merger approval from the FCC.”
Carr spent months during the approval process slamming CBS News’ coverage of Trump, accusing it of anti-conservative bias while also reviewing complaints over alleged “news distortion” at the network, specifically over the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
Raskin and Pallone aren’t the only ones who have accused Paramount of bribing the president to push through the merger process. While the company – then led by chief shareholder Shari Redstone – was in mediation over the lawsuit, several Democratic senators warned the company that any settlement with Trump could be seen as a violation of anti-bribery statutes.
“Paramount also canceled the highly popular ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,’ which President Trump openly dislikes, shortly after Mr. Colbert’s on-air criticism of Paramount’s settlement as a ‘big fat bribe,’” Raskin and Pallone stated. “As a condition of the merger, Skydance also agreed to make changes to CBS and its editorial practices that align with the Trump Administration’s political agenda, including a commitment to eliminate ‘perceived bias’ in its reporting, the hiring of an ombudsman to police the news organization’s editorial choices, and the dismantling of any initiatives aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The congressmen also raised questions about the influence the new Paramount chief’s father had on the process. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, is a close ally of the president’s and has invested heavily in his son’s venture.
“And within days of your June 7 meeting, President Trump endorsed your bid to purchase Paramount,” the lawmakers wrote Ellison. “Moreover, your father, Larry Ellison, who contributed up to $6 billion toward your purchase of Paramount, reportedly met privately with President Trump multiple times in recent months. Notably, none of these meetings were memorialized with filings in the FCC’s docket on this transaction, prompting objections from other parties in the record.”
Referencing the supposed “side deal” with the president, the congressmen brought up Trump’s public boast that he anticipated that the “new Owners” would give him $20 million of PSAs and similar programming.
“This offer was necessarily contingent on the FCC approving the deal and does not appear to present any legitimate value to the public, only to President Trump,” Pallone and Raskin stated. “Therefore, this appears to be an offer of payment and benefits to a government official designed to achieve a specific outcome from the government — in other words, a bribe.”
Also noting that several CBS newsroom leaders parted ways with the network over Paramount’s settlement negotiations with Trump, the two Democrats said that the combination of all of these actions could “run afoul of federal and state anti-bribery statutes” while demanding detailed answers surrounding the merger approval process.
“Two wrongs do not make a right—illegitimate demands from the FCC or the Administration do not absolve your company from wrongdoing,” the lawmakers wrote to David Ellison. “If Skydance offered a side deal of up to $20 million worth of advertisement or programming to President Trump in order to receive regulatory approval for the merger with Paramount, these actions would run afoul of federal and state anti-bribery statutes.”
They continued: “Similarly, if Paramount forced out CBS’s longtime leaders, spent $16 million to settle a sham lawsuit with President Trump, or cancelled a highly popular comedy show that President Trump dislikes in order to curry favor with the Administration and to receive regulatory approval for the merger with Skydance, these actions would likely further embolden President Trump to use lawsuits and regulatory authority to attack media organizations that he finds objectionable in order to silence them.”
The Independent has reached out to Paramount and Ellison for comment.
