Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin and several Times reporters in a district court in Florida on Monday night, accusing them of reporting “specifically designed to try and damage President Trump’s business, personal and political reputation”.
Trump seeks $15bn, plus punitive damages, court costs and “other relief”. Here’s a brief look at what’s in the filing.
What does Trump claim is defamatory in the suit?
The suit focuses on the publication of a set of news articles in the New York Times describing his work on the television show The Apprentice and stories derived from the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success by Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
Trump’s suit argues that passages in Times’ reporting describing Apprentice producer Mark Burnett’s “discovery” of Trump as a potential host for the show is factually incorrect because Trump had long been famous before the show began.
Reporting in the book described Trump’s multimillion-dollar inheritance from his father Fred C Trump as a product of “fraudulent tax evasion schemes”, and that Trump’s father had been “twisting the rules” of federal programs used to support returning second world war veterans to build his fortune.
The suit takes issue with reporting that depicted Trump’s offices in Trump Tower, upon Burnett’s initial visit, as having a “stench” with out of date decor and that Burnett had to “reinvent” Trump for television.
The suit also asserts that the Times reporting of the comments of John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, constituted an act of malicious, libelous reporting. In those stories, the Times reported that Kelly said Trump “had made admiring statements about Hitler”.
Other complaints Trump alleges are false and defamatory in the suit include Times’ reporting on Trump’s conduct in school, the value of his real estate deals and that he had been investigated for ties to the mafia and money laundering.
What is the legal standard for libel and defamation in Florida?
In Florida, a public figure suing a media entity must prove more than just the falsity of a statement and that it is damaging, but must also show that the publisher acted with “actual malice”.
To do so, a plaintiff must show that the author published something either knowing that it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the statement’s truth or falsity. This standard was set by the Times v Sullivan case at the US supreme court in 1964, a landmark precedent that is a foundation of American journalism. Historically, it has required extraordinary evidence showing that a defendant actually knew the information was false or entertained serious doubts as to the truth of it before publication to be successful.
How does Trump intend to overcome this hurdle?
To the degree that the lawsuit, filled with assertions of the “magnificence” of Trump’s real estate deals and the “sui generis charisma” of Trump himself, is more than a political tool, it argues that the Times set aside journalistic norms of objectivity in its reporting on Trump.
Trump’s suit argues that the timing of pieces was meant to dissuade voters from choosing him and that this was malicious and an act of “election interference”.
The suit cites a Jim Rutenberg opinion piece in August 2016, Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism, in which Rutenberg argues: “If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional.”
