On Monday night, Donald Trump initiated yet another legal action against the media, commonly referred to as a media trollsuit. As is typical, he leveraged the ad damnum clause to gain traction in the news cycle and attract attention.
“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 declared 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 lawsuit targets the Times along with reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, and Michael Schmidt, as well as Penguin Random House, LLC. Notably, the majority of the allegedly “defamatory” statements originate from 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! However, similar to Trump’s social media outbursts, the complaint primarily focuses on the Times and its supposed “editorial routine,” which he claims embodies “industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents.”
Consistently, Trump positions his financial demands as a battle for the common man.
Contrary to the Times’ and its reporters’ apparent impression, the First Amendment has never granted the Times—or Penguin, or anyone else—an unqualified privilege to make false, malicious, and defamatory statements about its opponents with the aim of ruining their lives and livelihoods. President Trump brings this suit to underscore that principle and to clearly communicate to all Americans, who are weary of and frustrated by decades of journalistic corruption, that the era of unchecked, deliberate defamation by the Times and other legacy media outlets is over.
Spanning over 82 pages, the lawsuit extols “President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen,” highlighting his name’s connection with excellence, luxury, and elegance, alongside his “brilliant business acumen and unique real estate abilities.”
However, it contains less legal substance than one might expect.
The multitude of supposedly defamatory statements comprises a mix 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 unpleasant smell of a musty, moldy carpet that seemed to emanate from every corner.”)
Actual malice is dismissed with conclusory allegations asserting that the reporters were fully 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 means:
Defendants each desire for President Trump to fail both politically and financially. Each harbors actual malice towards President Trump in the colloquial sense: that is, each—Craig, Buettner, Baker, and Schmidt, as individuals, along with the relevant executives at the Times and Penguin as corporations—subjectively wishes to harm President Trump, and each seeks to manipulate public opinion to President Trump’s disadvantage in order to worsen his current and future political and economic prospects. Put bluntly, Defendants baselessly harbor a deep-seated hatred for President Trump in a deranged manner.
The extravagant demand for damages is undermined right from the first paragraph, which boasts of Trump’s 2024 electoral victory and a “resounding mandate from the American people.” Filling the complaint with numerous mentions of the plaintiff’s highly successful social media and crypto businesses is an odd strategy to demonstrate that he has suffered harm amounting to $15 billion, plus punitive damages!
This is not the first instance of Trump suing the Times and these reporters. In January 2024, he was ordered to pay $392,000 in legal fees to the paper concerning earlier stories about his family’s questionable business practices. Following his niece Mary Trump providing the reporters with tax returns and other financial statements that revealed the family’s extravagant misappropriation of Fred Trump’s estate, Trump sued the paper for tortious interference with a contract—specifically, the confidentiality agreement Mary signed as part of her settlement with said estate. Notably, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed dismissed the case, noting that the plaintiff had not disputed any of the facts alleged in the article based on those tax returns, and ordered Trump to pay the Times’s legal fees under the state’s anti-SLAPP law.
The previous lawsuit was initiated by the ever-present Alina Habba, who requested a modest $100,000,000. However, Habba has since moved on to pursue cases in New Jersey, leaving the task to a now-familiar group: Alejandro Brito, Edward Paltzik, and Daniel Epstein (no relation to the individual Trump drew birthday sketches for). Collectively, they have represented Trump in various troll lawsuits against CNN, Michael Cohen, the Wall Street Journal, and the Des Moines Register—with amusing outcomes. None of these cases achieved any success in court. Their only notable achievement was leveraging the power of the presidency to extract settlements from CBS and ABC—a fact they made sure to include in this current complaint, along with Trump’s social media post celebrating his significant victory over “George Slopadopoulos.”
Perhaps they will manage to pressure the Times into a similar settlement. However, it seems rather unlikely that the former president will follow through with a trial that would necessitate him sitting for depositions regarding his family’s creative tax strategies and compel “Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett to testify under oath about their connection. If Trump aims to extract a quick payout and garner more sycophantic coverage, he may find himself disappointed. So far, he has not succeeded in compelling Rupert Murdoch to capitulate, and his publication is not even the one that established the Sullivan standard.
Liz Dye resides in Baltimore, where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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