By Ross A. Lincoln
Copyright thewrap
President Donald Trump filed a $15 billion libel lawsuit against the New York Times over unfavorable coverage of him, and for endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
The 85-page lawsuit was filed early Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court in Tampa, paperwork became available online. Read it here. It names reporters Peter Baker, Susanne Craig, Michael Schmidt and Russ Buettner as defendants along with the New York Times and Penguin Random House, which published a book by Craig and Buettner.
The lawsuit, which was short on specific examples of alleged libel or defamation, accused the Times and its reporters of publishing articles “filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump.”
It states: “Defendants made numerous other malicious, defamatory, and disparaging claims about President Trump in the Book and the Articles, including about his family, his overwhelming success, his businesses, his acumen, his brand, his wealth, and much more. This is all consistent with the modus operandi of the New York Times and its so-called journalists—a pattern of falsehoods and defamation.”
But ironically, the complaint uses numerous New York Times articles – while accusing the paper of setting out to maliciously defame him – to prove his points. For example, the complaint cites a December article about ABC’s settlement of a Trump lawsuit for $15 million as evidence of “the importance of the President’s highly meritorious and successful cases.”
In a rambling statement announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused the Times of “becoming a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party,” and claimed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris last year was “the largest illegal campaign contribution, ever.”
Trump also complained about negative coverage of his businesses, his family, the MAGA movement and even “our nation as a whole.”
Trump then gloated about how his similar lawsuits against Paramount and Disney resulted in both companies capitulating — and he took time during this portion to repeat one of his frequent insults against ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. And he repeated his numerous claims of wrongdoing against both companies’ media outlets, claims most legal experts have long insisted were frivolous at best.
Trump then said the suit will be filed in Florida. See the statement below:
It is of course only the latest of the president’s many lawsuits against media organizations whose coverage has not been deferential. And, as critics of Trump feared, it is more evidence he has been emboldened by the settlements he wrung out of two of them — ABC in December, and Paramount on July 1, just before the Trump administration approved its merger with Skydance.
Indeed, on July 18, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal over its coverage of his ties to deceased billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. For its part, Wall Street Journal is standing behind its reporting, and has vowed to fight that lawsuit “vigorously.”
As of this writing, the New York Times has not commented publicly on this lawsuit.
