Motion for You Should Really Comply in Advance.
The post Trump Lawyer Hints That Simon & Schuster Should ‘Express Contrition’ Like ABC appeared first on Above the Law.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s habit of suing the media is picking up steam of late. But the president-elect is no stranger to trollsuits against people who make mean words, or even quote him accurately. And now he’s got that $15 million from ABC in his pocket library, he’s hot to hold down other journalists and snatch their lunch money, too.
Trump is currently mired in litigation against reporter Bob Woodward, along with his publisher Simon & Schuster and S&S’s parent company Paramount. Woodward interviewed the then-president for “Rage,” the second of his three books (so far) on Trump’s presidency. In 2022, Woodward put out an audiobook of the interviews, and failed to kick up to the big guy. So naturally Trump filed a $50 million copyright and contract suit in the Northern District of Florida (where none of the parties reside) in January of 2023.
No contract was attached as an exhibit, but Trump insisted that he’d “made Woodward aware on multiple occasions, both on and off the record of the nature of the limited license to any recordings, therefore retaining for himself the commercialization and all other rights to the narration.”
He also included claims under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act,relying on a consumer fraud law to punish journalists, as Trump is currently doing in suits against the Des Moines Register and CBS.
S&S persuaded Judge Casey Rodgers to stay discovery pending its motions to dismiss and/or transfer for lack of venue, which she did, eventually transferring the case to the Southern District of New York, where all of the defendants reside. The court agreed with S&S that “President Trump, a nonresident [of the Northern District of Florida] who describes himself as a billionaire, deliberately sued in a venue with no connection to this case. If he is able to litigate his claims here, 600 miles from Mar-a-Lago, he is clearly capable of litigating his claims in the District of Columbia or Southern District of New York.”
Once transferred to New York, the case landed on the docket of Judge Paul Gardephe in August of 2023, whereupon the former president amended his complaint and the defendants refiled their motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
In that motion, Davis Wright Tremaine’s Elizabeth McNamara accused Trump of seeking to inappropriately reap a profit off of conducting his official duties:
As Woodward concluded in the Work, “Trump’s view of the presidency that comes across over and over again in our interviews” is that “‘[e]verything is mine.’…The presidency is mine. It is still mine. The only view that matters is mine.”
As if on a mission to prove this “everything is mine” thesis correct, Donald Trump filed suit “in his individual capacity” to claim a copyright interest over the entirety of Woodward’s Work simply because it features words spoken by “President Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.” In effect, President Trump seeks to profit from public service by demanding nearly $50 million. But the Copyright Act bars government officials like President Trump from asserting any copyright in an interview conducted as part of their official duties. Further, he fails to state a claim for joint authorship or any other form of ownership.
She did not remark on the screaming irony of a president who escaped criminal prosecution by convincing the Supreme Court that all his conduct in office was immune, then turning around and seeking to monetize that conduct in his personal capacity.
Judge Gardephe, a George Bush appointee who took senior status roughly the day this case landed in his lap, has yet to rule on the motion to dismiss, and discovery remains stayed as a matter of course. On November 20, Trump’s lawyer Robert Garson sent the court a peevish letter requesting to restart the proceedings and hammer out a case management plan.
“The issues in this case, namely the unlicensed for-profit use of President Trump’s voice that was recorded in an unofficial interview, is both timely and ripe, for fear of further unaccounted for profit being made from the President’s voice,” he wrote. “In addition, we trust that the Court can accommodate a discovery process that will cause minimal interference with the President’s impeding obligations.”
Receiving no response, Garson followed up yesterday with a downright pissy letter demanding that the court let him begin to take discovery on S&S and Woodward, even with the motion to dismiss still pending, because “further delays in this case will cause significant harm to not only to the President-elect, who is has been [sic] conclusively chosen by the American people to lead the Nation, but also the American people.”
And then … well, just look at this shit:
Since President Trump’s decisive victory resulting him [sic] being due to become the 47th President of the United States, there has been a renewed accountability among those who violated his rights over the last four years. Indeed, in Trump v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (1:24- cv-21050 District Court, S.D. Florida), where ABC was represented by the same counsel that represents the Defendants in this case, the defendants recognized the error of their ways and have shown their level of regret in words and deed. President Trump is hopeful that the Defendants in this case follow Mr. Stephanopoulos’ expression of contrition, especially since the Defendants have and and [sic] continue to profit.
McNamara does indeed represent ABC in the Trump case, although Woodward and S&S seem less inclined to express contrition. Nor does the court.
In an irate memo endorsement, Judge Gardephe ordered the clerk to terminate Garson’s motion, writing, “The Court is at work on the outstanding motion. To the extent Plaintiff seeks to embark on discovery before the motion to dismiss is resolved, that application is denied. ”
Looks like that bid for a discovery schedule that’s super deferential to the president’s time commitments — while imposing onerous discovery on Woodward and S&S — might be headed for choppy waters.
Trump v. Simon & Schuster [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
