Stretching the Bribery Statute to Paramount Deal Will Backfire

Paramount Global will pay a $16 million settlement to President Donald Trump, stemming from his lawsuit over allegedly deceptive editing of a 60 Minutes interview.

The announcement comes nearly two months after Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned Paramount could be engaging in a criminal “quid pro quo” if it settles Trump’s lawsuit. The insinuation is that a settlement, in the shadow of the Trump-era Federal Communications Commission’s review of Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance Media, might amount to bribery under federal law.

Many analysts, including Warren and some of her congessional colleagues, have parroted this argument in recent days. But this theory isn’t only wrong—it’s also legally incoherent and potentially dangerous if left unchallenged.

Parallel incentives isn’t an adequate legal barometer. Under federal law, bribery requires more than mere timing, coincidence, or the pursuit of mutual advantage. The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 201, requires a corrupt exchange: a specific intent to influence an official act in return for something of value.

As the US Supreme Court reaffirmed in McDonnell v. United States, the government must prove a “quid pro quo” with sufficient clarity to distinguish routine political or business behavior from criminal conduct. Mere access, parallel incentives, or even a generalized hope of favorable treatment doesn’t cut it. Nothing in the Trump-Paramount matter comes close to meeting that threshold.

The Supreme Court held in United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California that even when a payment is made to a public official, there must be a clear “link between a thing of value conferred upon a public official and a specific official act.” There is no such linkage in the Paramount case.

Settlements aren’t evidence of guilt. Legal counsel might view the litigation as a reputational threat, regardless of its ultimate merit. Paramount may wish to move past yet another headline-grabbing dispute. Or executives may believe a quick resolution is more cost-effective than prolonged litigation.

These are ordinary, defensible business considerations. Courts and regulators have long held that settlements don’t constitute evidence of guilt. This principle was affirmed in a range of contexts, especially in defamation law and consumer protection.

Consider the Fox News settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. In 2023, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million, one of the largest defamation settlements in US history. But crucially, it admitted no wrongdoing, and no court ever found its conduct unlawful. That didn’t stop commentators from drawing their own conclusions. But from a legal perspective, the settlement was a business decision, not a confession.

If the logic being argued now—that any settlement during a pending regulatory review is presumptively corrupt—held true, virtually every major corporate merger could be clouded by suspicion.

For large corporations, especially public ones, simultaneous interactions with multiple government agencies are routine and unavoidable.

For example, a single Fortune 500 company might be under review by the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission for antitrust compliance. Other interactions with agencies include being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, in talks with the Environmental Protection Agency over emissions standards, subject to a Food and Drug Administration labeling inquiry, and negotiating a zoning variance with a city council—all while resolving private litigation. When dealing with economies of scale, such overlap is routine.

For example, in 2021, Pfizer was simultaneously settling pricing lawsuits,responding to inquiries from the Securities Exchange and Commission about promotional practices regarding its operations, and negotiating massive vaccine contracts with federal agencies. At the same time, Amazon was engaged in unrelated labor disputes before the National Labor Relations Board while the FTC reviewed its acquisition of MGM.

To treat such overlaps as inherently suspicious is to criminalize scale itself. The bribery statute isn’t a catch-all for coincidences between legal events. It requires corrupt intent and a demonstrable exchange—something completely absent in the Paramount case.

Weakening Anti-Corruption Law

By labeling a potential Trump-Paramount settlement as bribery, critics are blurring the lines between corruption and commerce. They are effectively saying that a private actor can’t resolve litigation while any regulatory decision remains outstanding, an impossible and unreasonable standard.

This weaponization of bribery accusations undermines confidence in anti-corruption statutes. If every unfavorable transaction can be spun as a criminal quid pro quo, the law becomes a partisan tool, not a safeguard. Real corruption will become increasingly difficult to prosecute, as public skepticism grows in response to overreach.

We’ve seen this before. The McDonnell case itself arose from overzealous prosecutors trying to turn routine constituent service into a criminal act. The court rightly pushed back. Now, it’s up to legal professionals to do the same in the Trump-Paramount context.

When legal standards are stretched for partisan purposes, prosecutorial discretion is degraded, and public trust in the objective enforcement of anti-corruption laws is eroded. Lawyers and judges should be the first to resist that trend.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

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Thomas Stratmann is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and professor of economics and law at George Mason University.

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