03-07-2025
Democrats say companies are ‘bribing' Trump. Legal experts are skeptical.
Accusations that Paramount executives bribed the president to ensure government approval of the company's pending merger with Skydance media are just the latest example of elected Democrats crying foul at private sector companies kowtowing to the president. Earlier this year, a group of House Democrats claimed law firms' deals to provide pro bono legal services to causes Trump favors, among other elements, could violate state and federal laws, including bribery statutes.
But legal experts say that the Paramount settlement and law firm deals don't appear to rise to the level of criminal bribery.
'A lot of these things have a bribey feel to them,' said law professor and former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason. 'These are the kind of things that feel corrupt… but the term 'corruption' is far broader than the term 'criminal bribery.''
Charging Paramount executives with criminal bribery would require evidence that they negotiated with Trump to ensure Federal Communications Commission approval of the merger in exchange for the settlement payment to Trump's presidential library, experts say.
'All criminal bribery arrangements are abuses of power, but not all abuses of power are criminal bribery arrangements,' said Ryan Crosswell, a former public corruption prosecutor turned Democrat candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania.
It wouldn't be enough for prosecutors to say Paramount executives decided to settle the case in the hopes that doing so would protect the merger or because they were trying to curry favor with Trump, Eliason said.
'You'd have to show a real explicit quid pro quo agreement,' he said. 'Just the coincidence of timing is not enough.'
Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Warren and Wyden, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have been raising alarm about Paramount's conduct since May, after '60 Minutes' said the company had begun more closely supervising the program's news content. Trump sued CBS and Paramount in October of last year claiming that '60 Minutes' hurt his election chances by deceptively editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount's lawyers called the lawsuit an affront to the First Amendment 'without basis in law for fact' in court filings earlier this year. The company did not apologize to Trump as part of the settlement.
