By Jack Queen
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and book publisher Penguin Random House, his latest legal assault on major media companies he accuses of treating him unfairly.
The lawsuit filed on Monday in Florida federal court centers on a book about Trump by two New York Times reporters and three “false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging” articles that he says were aimed at sabotaging his chances in the 2024 presidential election.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Times said Trump’s lawsuit has no legitimate legal claims and is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.
Penguin Random House called Trump’s lawsuit meritless in a statement on Tuesday and said it stands by the book and its authors.
U.S. law makes it difficult for public figures like Trump to prevail in defamation cases, requiring them to prove defendants published information they knew or should have known was false.
Trump has nonetheless mounted a flurry of legal attacks against major media outlets during his second term, including a $10 billion defamation case against the Wall Street Journal in July.
In his Monday lawsuit, Trump accused the New York Times and Penguin Random House of maliciously publishing articles and a book filled with “repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump.”
The lawsuit cites three articles, including an editorial prior to the 2024 election saying Trump was unfit for office, and a 2024 book titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” which was written by two Times reporters and published by Penguin Random House.
Those publications harmed Trump’s business and personal reputation, thereby causing massive economic damage to his brand value and significant damage to his future financial prospects, Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing.
The filing comes after Trump threatened last week to sue the New York Times for its reporting on an allegedly sexually suggestive note and drawing given to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender who died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019.
Trump has said he parted ways with Epstein before the financier’s legal troubles became public in 2006.
Trump has intensified his legal attacks on the media during his second term.
In July, Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its owners for $10 billion over the newspaper’s coverage of Trump’s ties to Epstein. The Journal has said the lawsuit is meritless.
Also in July, CBS parent company Paramount agreed to give $16 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle his lawsuit alleging that the CBS news program “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris to boost the Democrat’s chances in the 2024 election.
And in December, ABC News agreed to give $15 million to Trump’s library to settle a lawsuit over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air involving sex abuse claims brought against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Gursimran Kaur and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim Coghill, Clarence Fernandez, Michael Perry and Daniel Wallis)
