President Donald Trump filed a $15 billion libel lawsuit on Monday against the New York Times over unfavorable coverage of him ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The 85-page lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida. Read it here. It names Times reporters Peter Baker, Susanne Craig, Michael Schmidt and Russ Buettner as defendants along with the Times and publishing hosue Penguin Random House, which published a book by Craig and Buettner.
The lawsuit, which lacked specific examples of alleged libel or defamation, accused the Times and its reporters of publishing articles “filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump.”
It states: “Defendants made numerous other malicious, defamatory, and disparaging claims about President Trump in the Book and the Articles, including about his family, his overwhelming success, his businesses, his acumen, his brand, his wealth, and much more. This is all consistent with the modus operandi of the New York Times and its so-called journalists—a pattern of falsehoods and defamation.”
Nearly all of the examples the suit provides are articles published before Trump began his second term, focusing instead on stories published during his first term, articles covering during the 2024 election and “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created The Illusion of Success,” Buettner and Craig’s book published in September 2024.
The only episode of “defamatory” conduct comes in the Times’ coverage in July of the Trump adminstration’s insistence that Barack Obama’s administration manipulated evidence to claim Russia interfered in the 2016 election to elect Trump. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have affirmed Russia’s efforts and intent during the 2016 election.
The paper said in statement that the suit “has no merit.”
“It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting,” it said. “The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
The prospect of a lawsuit was alluded to by publisher A.G. Sulzberger on Monday during a speech at the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ 50th Anniversary Gala in New York. He said the Times now spends nearly 10 times more on security and legal protections for journalists than it did a decade ago.
Sulzberger said the Trump administration had deployed tactics seen in authoritarian regimes that included sowing distrust in news organizations and using courts to “impose financial pressure.”
“If the free press is a watchdog, the playbook seeks to make it a lapdog,” he said. “Each element in this playbook is apparent in the escalating anti-press campaign by the Trump administration.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team declined to comment, pointing to the president’s Truth Social post.
The complaint ironically uses numerous New York Times articles – while accusing the paper of setting out to maliciously defame him – to prove his points. For example, the complaint cites a December article about Disney’s settlement of a Trump lawsuit for $15 million as evidence of “the importance of the President’s highly meritorious and successful cases.”
The bar for any defamation lawsuit is high, and even higher for a public figure like the president. Trump must prove that the statements published are false and that the defendants knew they were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
In a rambling statement announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused the Times of “becoming a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party,” and claimed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris last year was “the largest illegal campaign contribution, ever.”
Trump also complained about negative coverage of his businesses, his family, the MAGA movement and even “our nation as a whole.”
Trump then gloated about how his similar lawsuits against Paramount and Disney resulted in both companies capitulating — and he took time during this portion to repeat one of his frequent insults against ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. And he repeated his numerous claims of wrongdoing against both companies’ media outlets, claims most legal experts have long insisted were frivolous at best.
Trump then said the suit will be filed in Florida. See the statement below:
It is of course only the latest in the president’s legal warfare against media organizations whose coverage has not been deferential. And, as critics of Trump feared, it is more evidence he has been emboldened by the settlements he wrung out of two of them — ABC in December, and Paramount on July 1, just before the Trump administration approved its merger with Skydance.
Indeed, on July 18, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal over its coverage of his ties to deceased billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. For its part, the Wall Street Journal is standing behind its reporting, and has vowed to fight that lawsuit “vigorously.”
