President Donald Trump reportedly filed a sweeping $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times on Thursday, accusing the paper of publishing false claims about his business record and professional integrity.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, also names Penguin Random House and several Times reporters as defendants.
In the 70-page filing, Trump alleges that the newspaper “wrongly defame[d] and disparage[d] President Trump’s hard-earned professional reputation, which he painstakingly built for decades as a private citizen before becoming President of the United States.” The complaint cites Trump’s long business career and his success as host of The Apprentice, which it calls “the most successful reality television show of all-time.”
The lawsuit centers on two New York Times articles published in September 2024, along with the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Both, the suit argues, presented “knowingly false and malicious” accounts of Trump’s financial history designed to damage his credibility and influence public opinion ahead of the 2024 election.
Reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, and Peter Baker are named as defendants alongside the Times and Penguin Random House. The complaint specifically disputes claims that Trump received millions from his father through “fraudulent tax evasion schemes” and that those funds were “taxable gifts masquerading as loans.” The suit argues these allegations “constitute a likely tax fraud that went unnoticed” — a charge Trump’s attorneys call “entirely fabricated.”
Trump’s legal team contends that the alleged falsehoods have caused measurable harm to his businesses, including the Trump Organization and his social media venture, Truth Social. “Statements falsely casting aspersions on President Trump’s reputation as a businessman or the Trump Organization’s legitimacy therefore cause direct and easily foreseeable harm to these businesses’ value, revenue, and profitability,” the suit states.
The president’s legal action comes just weeks after a similar defamation suit against the Times was dismissed by Judge Steven Merryday, who wrote that “a complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally.” That decision, however, did not deter Trump, who maintains that major media outlets have long pursued what he calls a “coordinated campaign of defamation” aimed at undermining his political and business standing.
Trump has previously prevailed in lawsuits against ABC News and CBS/Paramount, winning millions in damages. He is also pursuing a separate defamation case against The Wall Street Journal over an article that alleged he wrote a birthday message to financier Jeffrey Epstein.
A spokesperson for Trump said the new suit reflects the president’s determination to “hold the corporate media accountable for years of malicious lies.” The complaint, they added, “sends a clear message that no institution — no matter how powerful — has the right to destroy reputations through reckless falsehoods.”
The Times has not yet publicly responded to the new filing.
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