President Donald Trump says he is filing a bold lawsuit against The New York Times, alleging defamation and accusing the media of being a virtual spokesman for the Democratic Party.
The president demands $15 billion in damages, a figure that exceeds the total market capitalization of The New York Times Company.
The lawsuit is the latest example of what First Amendment experts have described as a presidential strategy to silence critical news coverage and limit freedom of expression by filing legally dubious lawsuits.
Trump says it’s an effort to restore the integrity of journalism.
The defamation lawsuit against The Times also includes Penguin Random House and four Times journalists, two of whom wrote a book for Penguin titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Fathers Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.
“Today I have the great honor of filing a $15 billion defamation and smear lawsuit against The New York Times,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The defamation lawsuit against The Times also includes Penguin Random House and four Times journalists, two of whom wrote a book for Penguin titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Fathers Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.
The 85-page lawsuit is sometimes read as a pro-Trump opinion piece, with page after page of effusive praise to the president and repeated references to other lawsuits he has filed against other media outlets.
The president announced with hype and dishes the lawsuit in a publication on Truth Social on Monday night. He accused the Times of an often admiring and critical publication of making false statements about him, his family, and his businesses. He described the filing of the lawsuit as a great honor.
The Times has rejected Trump’s legal threats on numerous occasions, including last week. The publication did not immediately respond to Trump’s lawsuit, filed in the middle of the night, which was due to appear in a Tampa federal court.
CNN reviewed a copy of the lawsuit but could not immediately confirm that it had been received by the court.
The New York Times has been allowed to lie, defame, and defame me freely for too long, and that ends, he added, while highlighting the Times’ support for Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.
But supporting someone else for president doesn’t qualify as an act of defamation, and Trump’s legal team will struggle to prove the charges filed in the lawsuit.
To win a defamation lawsuit, public figures like Trump must prove – real justice – real, meaning defendants knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for their veracity.
Media analysts have said Trump’s real intention, with some of his demands, is to win public relations and publicly embarrass the media, with winning or losing a secondary consideration in the courts at best.
Hours before Trump announced the lawsuit, Times editor AG Sulzberger spoke publicly about what he called the anti-press manual, which is being used by aspirants to strong men – all over the world, including in the United States.
Part of the plan, he said, is to exploit civil courts to impose financial pressure – and punish independent journalists.
Sulzberger, who has drawn attention to this issue through essays and public speeches over the past year, presented himself at the 50th anniversary gala of Investigative Reporters & Editors in New York City on Monday night and urged the other leaders of the media present to defend their journalism. Defend your journalists. Defend your rights.
The president’s filing against The Times cited earlier examples of lawsuits filed by Trump’s lawyers against Disney’s ABC News and Paramount Global’s CBS News, which resulted in multimillion-dollar deals by both companies, to the great disgust of other media outlets.
Journalism advocacy groups warned that, in reaching a deal, rather than defending Trump in court, ABC and CBS were emboldening Trump to continue his legal campaign.
Trump is also suing The Wall Street Journal and journalists who wrote an article about a collection of letters given to Jeffrey Epstein. A spokesman for Dow Jones, the parent company of the Journal, said: “We have full confidence in the rigour and accuracy of our reports and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
This is a developing story.
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