Last night, Donald Trump filed yet another media trollsuit. As usual, he took full advantage of the ad damnum clause to juice the news cycle.
“Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country,” he screeched on his social media platform. “The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!”
The suit names the Times, reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Beuttner, Peter Baker, and Michael Schmidt, along with Penguin Random House, LLC. In reality, most of the “defamatory” statements are located in Craig and Buettner’s book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, published by Penguin Random House on September 17, 2024 — just inside New York’s one-year statute of limitations for defamation! But like Trump’s social media bleeting, the complaint is focused almost solely on the perfidy of the Times whose “editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents.”
As always, Trump characterizes his demand for cash as a fight for the little guy.
Contrary to the Times’ and its reporters’ apparent impression, the First Amendment has never furnished the Times—or Penguin, or anyone else—with an unqualified privilege to make false, malicious, and defamatory statements about its opponents in order to try and ruin their lives and livelihoods. President Trump brings this suit to highlight that principle and to clearly state to all Americans exhausted by, and furious at, the decades of journalistic corruption, that the era of unchecked, deliberate defamation by the Times and other legacy media outlets is over.
Over 82 frothy pages, the lawsuit praises “President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen,” “his name’s association with excellence, luxury, and elegance,” his “brilliant business acumen and unique real estate abilities.”
It’s a little lighter on actual law.
The dozens of supposedly defamatory statements are a hodgepodge of protected opinion (“Good things happened to Donald Trump. He did not earn most of those good things”), attributed quotes (“He likewise cheated to get into college, according to his estranged niece, Mary L. Trump,”) and verifiable facts (“the first thing Burnett’s producers noticed when they arrived on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower was the stink, a musty and moldy carpet smell that seemed to emanate from every corner.”)
Actual malice is waved away with conclusory allegations that the reporters were well aware of Trump’s greatness (“At the time of publication, Craig, Buettner, and Penguin knew that President Trump paid appropriate attention to the finances of his businesses,”) as well as … whatever this is:
Defendants each desire for President Trump fail politically and financially. Each feels actual malice towards President Trump in the colloquial sense: that is, each—Craig, Buettner, Baker, and Schmidt, as individuals, and the Times and Penguin’s relevant executives as corporations—subjectively wishes to harm President Trump, and each wish to manipulate public opinion to President Trump’s disadvantage to worsen his current and future political and economic prospects. Put bluntly, Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way.
And the fantastical damage demand is undercut by the very first paragraph, which touts Trump’s 2024 electoral win and “resounding mandate from the American people.” Larding your complaint with numerous mentions of the plaintiff’s wildly successful social media and crypto businesses is a weird way to show he’s been harmed to the tune of $15 billion, plus punis!
This isn’t even the first time Trump sued the Times and these reporters. In January of 2024, he was ordered to pay $392,000 in legal fees to the paper over earlier stories about his family’s sharp business practices. After his niece Mary Trump handed the reporters tax returns and other financial statements revealing the family’s extravagant looting of Fred Trump’s estate, Trump sued the paper for tortious interference with a contract — namely the confidentiality agreement Mary signed pursuant to her settlement with said estate. Noting that the plaintiff had not disputed any of the facts alleged in the article based on those tax returns, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed dismissed the case and ordered Trump to pay the Times’s legal fees under the state’s anti-SLAPP law.
The prior suit was filed by the ubiquitous Alina Habba, who only asked for a modest $100,000,000. But Habba is off pretending to prosecute cases in New Jersey, and so the task falls to a now familiar cast of characters: Alejandro Brito, Edward Paltzik, and Daniel Epstein (no relation to that guy Trump drew birthday boobs for). Between them, they’ve represented Trump in trollsuits against CNN, Michael Cohen, the Wall Street Journal, and the Des Moines Register (with hilarious results). None of these dumb turkeys went anywhere in court. Their only success came in leveraging the power of the presidency to extort settlements from CBS and ABC — which they made sure to mention in this current complaint, adding Trump’s social media post exulting in his big victory over “George Slopadopoulos.”
And perhaps they’ll manage to arm twist the Times into something similar. It seems pretty unlikely that the president will go through with a trial that would require him to sit for depositions about his family’s creative tax strategies and force “Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett to go under oath to discuss their association. But if Trump hopes to extract some quick cash and more sycophantic coverage, he may well wind up disappointed. So far, he’s had no success forcing Rupert Murdoch to knuckle under, and his paper isn’t even the one that established the Sullivan standard.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
The post Trump Sues NYT For Tortious Journalisming. Again. appeared first on Above the Law.
Last night, Donald Trump filed yet another media trollsuit. As usual, he took full advantage of the ad damnum clause to juice the news cycle.
“Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country,” he screeched on his social media platform. “The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!”
The suit names the Times, reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Beuttner, Peter Baker, and Michael Schmidt, along with Penguin Random House, LLC. In reality, most of the “defamatory” statements are located in Craig and Buettner’s book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, published by Penguin Random House on September 17, 2024 — just inside New York’s one-year statute of limitations for defamation! But like Trump’s social media bleeting, the complaint is focused almost solely on the perfidy of the Times whose “editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents.”
As always, Trump characterizes his demand for cash as a fight for the little guy.
Contrary to the Times’ and its reporters’ apparent impression, the First Amendment has never furnished the Times—or Penguin, or anyone else—with an unqualified privilege to make false, malicious, and defamatory statements about its opponents in order to try and ruin their lives and livelihoods. President Trump brings this suit to highlight that principle and to clearly state to all Americans exhausted by, and furious at, the decades of journalistic corruption, that the era of unchecked, deliberate defamation by the Times and other legacy media outlets is over.
Over 82 frothy pages, the lawsuit praises “President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen,” “his name’s association with excellence, luxury, and elegance,” his “brilliant business acumen and unique real estate abilities.”
It’s a little lighter on actual law.
The dozens of supposedly defamatory statements are a hodgepodge of protected opinion (“Good things happened to Donald Trump. He did not earn most of those good things”), attributed quotes (“He likewise cheated to get into college, according to his estranged niece, Mary L. Trump,”) and verifiable facts (“the first thing Burnett’s producers noticed when they arrived on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower was the stink, a musty and moldy carpet smell that seemed to emanate from every corner.”)
Actual malice is waved away with conclusory allegations that the reporters were well aware of Trump’s greatness (“At the time of publication, Craig, Buettner, and Penguin knew that President Trump paid appropriate attention to the finances of his businesses,”) as well as … whatever this is:
Defendants each desire for President Trump fail politically and financially. Each feels actual malice towards President Trump in the colloquial sense: that is, each—Craig, Buettner, Baker, and Schmidt, as individuals, and the Times and Penguin’s relevant executives as corporations—subjectively wishes to harm President Trump, and each wish to manipulate public opinion to President Trump’s disadvantage to worsen his current and future political and economic prospects. Put bluntly, Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way.
And the fantastical damage demand is undercut by the very first paragraph, which touts Trump’s 2024 electoral win and “resounding mandate from the American people.” Larding your complaint with numerous mentions of the plaintiff’s wildly successful social media and crypto businesses is a weird way to show he’s been harmed to the tune of $15 billion, plus punis!
This isn’t even the first time Trump sued the Times and these reporters. In January of 2024, he was ordered to pay $392,000 in legal fees to the paper over earlier stories about his family’s sharp business practices. After his niece Mary Trump handed the reporters tax returns and other financial statements revealing the family’s extravagant looting of Fred Trump’s estate, Trump sued the paper for tortious interference with a contract — namely the confidentiality agreement Mary signed pursuant to her settlement with said estate. Noting that the plaintiff had not disputed any of the facts alleged in the article based on those tax returns, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed dismissed the case and ordered Trump to pay the Times’s legal fees under the state’s anti-SLAPP law.
The prior suit was filed by the ubiquitous Alina Habba, who only asked for a modest $100,000,000. But Habba is off pretending to prosecute cases in New Jersey, and so the task falls to a now familiar cast of characters: Alejandro Brito, Edward Paltzik, and Daniel Epstein (no relation to that guy Trump drew birthday boobs for). Between them, they’ve represented Trump in trollsuits against CNN, Michael Cohen, the Wall Street Journal, and the Des Moines Register (with hilarious results). None of these dumb turkeys went anywhere in court. Their only success came in leveraging the power of the presidency to extort settlements from CBS and ABC — which they made sure to mention in this current complaint, adding Trump’s social media post exulting in his big victory over “George Slopadopoulos.”
And perhaps they’ll manage to arm twist the Times into something similar. It seems pretty unlikely that the president will go through with a trial that would require him to sit for depositions about his family’s creative tax strategies and force “Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett to go under oath to discuss their association. But if Trump hopes to extract some quick cash and more sycophantic coverage, he may well wind up disappointed. So far, he’s had no success forcing Rupert Murdoch to knuckle under, and his paper isn’t even the one that established the Sullivan standard.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
