Wednesday’s CBS Mornings featured the latest author to partner with CBS News to spotlight a new book and provide a QR code for viewers to order the book in exchange for CBS receiving a cut. This time, however, it wasn’t for something uncontroversial like a self-help book, but “a legal thriller” by race hustler Benjamin Crump, the man behind seemingly every high-profile racially-tinged incident from Travyon Martin to George Floyd and everyone in between.
The co-hosts eagerly served him one softball after another to engage in peddling all sorts of racial resentment and claim without evidence Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) are carrying out “an assault on our Constitution in every way” and made life worse in America than any work of fiction could.
Racial arsonist Benjamin Crump on 'CBS Mornings': "What ICE is doing is an assault on our Constitution in every day. First Amendment right against free speech and assembly. Second Amendment right to bear arms. Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizures. Fifth… pic.twitter.com/IVkX12Rfns
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 28, 2026
Co-host and Democrat donor Gayle King was ebullient in tease: “Renowned civil rights attorney, Ben Crump is here with his debut novel. I say, you always meet the nicest people in [the green room]. It’s a legal thriller.”
King later cued him up by fawning over Crump as “a prominent defender of racial justice” and “been at the center of some of the biggest civil rights cases of the past two decades, from the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin”
After inviting viewers to scan a QR code on-screen (with a disclaimer that CBS would take a “commission” for sales purchased through this avenue), King explained the plot…which sounds like a black supremacist’s dream novel: “It tells the story of attorney Beau Lee Cooper who fights the undercover — who fights to uncover, rather, the truth after a former Chicago police officer is shot by four White police officers.”
King started with the scenes in Minneapolis because “the news of the day…hijacks” any book talk and what’s happened this month was “eerily similar to what has happened in this book.”
Inviting him to provide “your take,” Crump mesmerized King and co-hosts Vladimir Duthiers and Nate Burleson by telling them “obviously what ICE is doing is an assault on our Constitution in every way,” adding:
First Amendment right against free speech and assembly, Second Amendment right to bear arms, Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizures, Fifth Amendment right to due process, Sixth Amendment right to counsel. I mean, what they’re doing is a complete assault. And so even the facts and the tragedy of Alex Pretti, when I think about Worse Than a Lie, you see those similarities there in my fiction book and what’s happening in reality in America today[.]
When King brought up that “it’s so important to have the video” of fatal incidents, Crump argued that isn’t that significant because “in the book, you see, the system conspires to try to oppress the truth, and so we have a lot to learn from not only books like Worse Than a Lie to inspire the next generation of Civil Rights lawyers, but to say, we refuse to look away.”
Duthiers interjected a few moments later to shift matters back to Minneapolis with the Renee Good and Alex Pretti cases. Burleson followed up by wondering what “advice would you give” to those who “engag[e] with ICE.”
Way to simplify harassing, spitting at, ransacking their hotels, and destroying their vehicles, Nate (click “expand”):
DUTHIERS: So, Ben, if you were advising the families of Alex Pretti or Renee Good, what would you advise them to do? Because what legal recourse do they have given that we don’t know anything about the individuals who killed them?
CRUMP: Well, that’s it, and just like all the cases I’ve handled, you have to have your own parallel investigation. You can’t trust that they will get it right, that they will get the evidence right, so you want to make sure you file your civil action. You want to make sure that you are doing an independent autopsy. Don’t ever assume that they’re going to get justice for you. We have to fight for every ounce of justice we get. And I know Tony Romanucci, my friend working with Renee Good’s family tell them the same and I’d tell Alex Pretti’s family the same.
KING: Do your own investigation.
CRUMP: Don’t ever think that justice is going to be easy.
BURLESON: I want to get back to the book, but last question here, what advice would you give individuals who are engaging with ICE, or if ICE is engaging with them?
CRUMP: You know, it’s so sad because my daughter asked these questions, because people are so confused. You have to say, make sure you’re video and like Gayle said, because we have to make a record, we have to document what they are doing, and we have to say the Constitution still matters. We are not a police state.
BURLESON: Yes.
Following a giggle-filled detour of King noting Crump had the main character in his novel share his own initials (BLC), family structure (wife and daughter), and interests, they concluded by wondering if he was channeling John Grisham and whether he wrote this to become a movie (click “expand”):
KING: But have you always wanted to write a novel? Because I said, are you channeling your inner John Grisham here?
CRUMP: Well, you know, Gayle, it’s interesting because my personal hero, Thurgood Marshall said once that most people won’t ever know what actually happens in a courtroom. So, he always wrote his briefs to be very engaging.
KING: Yeah.
CRUMP: And what is more engaging than a legal thriller?
KING: This is a civil rights legal thriller.
CRUMP: This is a civil rights legal thriller, because when I’m on those planes going all over America, I’m always reading, you know, John Grisham’s, The Rainmaker or —
KING: You’re reading John Grisham.
CRUMP: — The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly.
KING: He is good. Yeah.
CRUMP: And I said, well, we’re going to create legal thriller, but it’s going to have a different kind of flavor, a different culture to it. And so that’s what we wanted to do with this civil rights legal thriller and now, more than ever in America, we could use a civil rights legal thriller to engage us and educate us.
KING: I could see this as a movie.
DUTHIERS: Or a series.
BURLESON: Yeah.
CRUMP: Yes, ma’am.
KING: Have you thought about it, Mr. Crump?
CRUMP: Well, they are —
KING: Well, uh-uh-uh! Have you thought about it?
CRUMP: — well, there are a lot of cases, Gayle, that, you know, we’ve worked on. There are a lot of those things we draw from in the Beau Lee Cooper series.
KING: Okay, I am going to take that a yes.
BURLESON: Yes, yes.
KING: Oh, Beau Lee Cooper series.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from January 28, click here.
