President Donald J. Trump reportedly filed a sweeping lawsuit late Monday against The New York Times, accusing the nation’s most influential newspaper of waging a decades-long campaign of “intentional and malicious defamation” against him.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, names the paper and four of its reporters as defendants. At issue are several stories and a book published by two journalists before the 2024 presidential election, which Trump’s attorneys argue were designed to smear his reputation and undermine his political movement.
“Overall, Defendants used the Book and the Articles to make numerous malicious, defamatory, and disparaging claims about President Trump based on distortion and fabrication,” the president’s legal team wrote in court filings.
They asserted that the reporting ignored the reality of Trump’s career. “The Book and the Articles recklessly disregard the truth that the President’s fortune was developed through business genius, creativity, perseverance, talent, authenticity and other unique traits.”
The suit disputes the notion, advanced by some of the Times’s coverage, that Trump’s success was built on luck or questionable dealings. “Not, as the Book and the Articles falsely claim, by luck, any semblance of wrongdoing, ‘twisting the rules,’ or reliance on government programs,” the filing states.
Trump announced the legal action himself on Truth Social, unleashing another sharp critique of the newspaper that has long been one of his favorite political foils. Calling the outlet “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country,” Trump said the Times has “become a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
“The ‘Times’ has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole,” Trump declared in his post.
The newspaper, for its part, dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous and politically motivated. “It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting,” a Times spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “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 filing marks Trump’s latest legal battle with media outlets he says have crossed the line from journalism into partisan activism.
In recent months, he has also sued The Wall Street Journal, two of its reporters, its publisher, and Rupert Murdoch personally. That case followed a report alleging Trump once sent a letter to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 — an account Trump’s team flatly denies.
By taking on the country’s most powerful papers, Trump is signaling that he intends not only to defend his personal reputation but also to challenge what he sees as systemic bias in the press against conservative figures and the America First movement.
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