Having secured big payouts from Disney/ABC and Paramount/CBS in recent months, Donald Trump is now once again taking the New York Times to court — for at least $15 billion dollars.
Hyperbolically citing his 2024 election win over Kamala Harris as “the greatest personal and political achievement in American history,” the former Apprentice host exclaims that the Gray Lady is “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.” Offering nothing in terms of evidence or argument for that matter, the filings alleges one “election-interfering salvo” after another as “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”
Also aiming the cloying defamation and libel suit at Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, and Penguin Random House over the NYT’s endorsement of Harris, various article and the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created The Illusion Of Success, Trump wants a jury trial, the filing late Monday in federal court in MAGA friendly Florida declares.
“The newspaper’s editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents,” the photo heavy 85-page document from a trio of Sunshine State and Lone Star state law firms adds. “As such, the Times has become a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump on the legacy media landscape.”
Just before heading over the Atlantic for pomp and ceremony state visit to the UK this week, Trump lashed out from his Truth Social perch about how “the New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!”
Of course, huffing and puffing aside and with all the ring kissing going on of late, the increasingly eratic Trump hasn’t been as successful in the past in his legal actions against the NYT as he has at squeezing money out of Hollywood (over $15 million each from Disney and Paramount over what were widely considered weak suits).
In 2023, New York Supreme Court judge, Robert R. Reed tossed out Trump’s 2021 suit against the Times, and its reporters, Susanne Craig (her again?) David Barstow and Russell Buettner (him, again?), as well as his niece Mary Trump, over a 2018 article on his tax schemes. From way back in the 1980s Reagan Era, Trump has promised to sue news outlets over coverage he didn’t like. Most of the time, the lawsuits never occurred and when they did, up until Trump won the White House again in 2024, they usual were dismissed or withered away.
Different ballgame now as Trump openly goes after his perceived enemies and critics with few restraints.
Right now, Trump is pursuing (though with less vigor of late) a $10 billion defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal over their reporting on his connections to one time close pal and now dead convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was Epstein in the fore last week, when the NYT reported that a lawyer for Trump wanted the broadsheet to retract and say sorry for its story on the supposed letter and sexual drawing given to the once high flying financier by the now POTUS back in 2003 for his 50th birthday.
Insisting Trump did not make the semi-explicit drawing or letter, nor sign it, attorney Edward Paltzik threatened a $10 billion lawsuit — now Trump has upped the ante.
The New York Times did not respond tonight to Deadline’s request for comment on Trump’s latest lawsuit.
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