Shari Redstone wants ‘60 Minutes’ to back off Trump amid lawsuit. They are doing the opposite.

Despite the pleas of its corporate boss to “delay sensitive” stories about Donald Trump, 60 Minutes is planning to run a segment on Sunday night that will focus on how the president is targeting “some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.”

The report will be presented by correspondent Scott Pelley, who ended the latest broadcast of the Sunday night news show by issuing a stunning on-air rebuke of his network’s owners following the sudden resignation of the program’s top producer.

Last week, longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens stunningly announced that he was leaving the vaunted news magazine, claiming that he was no longer allowed “to make independent decisions” on the direction of the show, suggesting corporate interference.

Of course, the elephant in the room was Trump’s meritless $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News over the interview 60 Minutes conducted with Kamala Harris late last year, which the president contends was deceptively edited and amounted to election interference.

Despite legal experts saying Trump’s case is baseless, Shari Redstone – the chief shareholder in CBS News’ parent company Paramount – has pushed for a settlement in the case in order to help get a merger across the line with Skydance, which needs the Trump administration’s approval. Owens, meanwhile, had made it clear that he would not apologize for the way the program conducted or edited the interview.

Meanwhile, in what is likely to only incense the president even further, the Harris segment at the center of this kerfuffle recently received an Emmy nomination – for “outstanding edited interview.”

Following Trump’s return to the White House, multiple media corporations have backed down in their legal fights against the president, who unleashed a series of questionable lawsuits over his complaints about unfair coverage. Amid these capitulations by organizations such as Disney and Meta, Paramount has expressed a willingness to settle with Trump in hopes that his handpicked FCC chairman – who has acted as Trump’s personal attack dog against non-conservative news outlets – will approve the merger with Skydance.

In recent days, the two parties have entered into mediation, with the Paramount board having already laid out acceptable financial terms for a settlement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is willing to pay Trump in the neighborhood of $15 to $20 million, which would be in line with the amount Disney settled to resolve the president’s lawsuit against ABC News.

The prospect of a potential settlement, which has outraged CBS News employees and journalists, has also resulted in Redstone upping her concerns over the editorial direction of 60 Minutes, which is the crown jewel of the network’s news division.

At the same time, while the president’s lawsuit and the upcoming merger are front and center in Redstone’s mind, she has also taken umbrage with the program’s coverage of the Gaza war and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

A passionate supporter of Israeli causes, Redstone grew incensed with the Sunday night newsmagazine following a January segment about those impacted by the war in Gaza because she viewed it as antisemitic, CBS News sources told The Independent. Previously, Redstone publicly backed CBS Mornings co-anchor Tony Dokoupil after he was reprimanded by CBS News chief Wendy McMahon for violating editorial standards for his combative interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates on Gaza.

A day after that report ran, she pushed to have veteran CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky installed as the interim executive editor overseeing standards. In that role, Zirinisky would serve as a check on Owens and McMahon and serve as the eyes and ears for Redstone.

Redstone grew even more anxious last month after the president raged about segments that 60 Minutes did on Trump’s Oval Office meltdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the president’s efforts to annex Greenland. The president urged FCC chief Brendan Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment” on Paramount and CBS “for their unlawful and illegal behavior.”

Following the president’s blowup over the program’s reports, the New York Times first reported that Redstone contacted Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks and asked to be briefed about all politically sensitive segments for the remainder of the show’s season, which ends later this month.

“Inside 60 Minutes, news of her desire for greater oversight, reported here and elsewhere, struck many as a violation of the show’s long-cherished editorial independence—not just from its parent company, but even from the rest of CBS News,” Puck noted this week. “Regardless, Shari’s attempts to influence 60 Minutes coverage went beyond that. According to those sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Shari also asked Cheeks if it would be possible to delay sensitive stories about Trump or his policies until after she had closed the Skydance deal.”

At that point, although 60 Minutes had made no changes as a result of Redstone’s requests, Owens felt that he could no longer remain at 60 Minutes due to the interference attempted by the corporate overlords.

“It’s clear that I’ve become the problem — I’m the corporation’s problem,” Owens said while addressing the show’s staff about his resignation. Additionally, he bristled at “having a minder” and how, in the past, “the corporation didn’t know what was coming up.”

Ahead of CBS News promoting the upcoming segment about Trump’s efforts to intimidate law firms and bend them to his will, the New York Times reported that 60 Minutes staffers had “expressed concern that corporate overseers could potentially interfere with an upcoming segment about conflicts between major law firms and the Trump administration.”

The segment is indeed scheduled to air this Sunday and will be hosted by Pelley, who said at the end of the last broadcast that Owens quit because he “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” Pelley also used that monologue to note that Paramount is pushing for a merger that “the Trump administration must approve.”