Judge tosses Trump’s $15bln defamation case against New York Times

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News websites
Today 15:17

A federal judge criticized Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation case against the New York Times as sprawling and unclear, giving him 28 days to file a proper claim.

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A sign for The New York Times hangs above the entrance to its building, May 6, 2021, in New York (AP)

A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, publisher Penguin, and two Times reporters, describing the filing as full of “vituperation and invective” and procedurally flawed for failing to present a clear legal claim.

Axios reported on Friday that The New York Times is preparing to contest US President Donald Trump's $15 billion defamation lawsuit, with the paper's executive editor Joseph Kahn expressing confidence in victory.

US District Court Judge Steven Merryday in Florida said Trump may refile and amend the suit within 28 days. He cited Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which requires complaints to include “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,” as the basis for rejecting the filing.

“Alleging only two simple counts of defamation, the complaint consumes eighty-five pages,” Merryday wrote. “Count I appears on page eighty, and Count II appears on page eighty-three … Even under the most generous and lenient application of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible.”

The judge criticized the complaint’s “many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations,” along with “much more, persistently alleged in abundant, florid, and enervating detail.”

Merryday emphasized that the order does not weigh in on the truth of the allegations or the validity of Trump’s claims. However, he stressed that “a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief.”

'This lawsuit has no merit'

Trump filed the lawsuit earlier this week, accusing the Times and Penguin of acting as a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party and of publishing “false and defamatory content” about him. The suit focuses on coverage of his television show The Apprentice and reporting in 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.

Among his claims, Trump alleges the Times misrepresented him as being “discovered” as a potential host for The Apprentice, despite his preexisting fame, and that the book falsely described his inheritance from Fred C. Trump as the product of “fraudulent tax evasion schemes,” including accusations that his father manipulated federal programs for war veterans to build his fortune.

Additional allegations target reporting on Trump’s school conduct, the value of his real estate deals, and purported investigations into his ties to organized crime and money laundering. Trump’s filing argues that “the Times has betrayed the journalistic ideals of honesty, objectivity, and accuracy that it once professed” and calls the outlet “a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump.”

A spokesperson for the New York Times responded, “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favour and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

Wider context

The case will test the enduring power of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court decision that established the "actual malice" standard.

Under this precedent, public officials and figures such as Trump must prove that a publication either knowingly published false information or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

Legal experts note that this bar is intentionally high to protect press freedom, making successful lawsuits against major media outlets rare.

Trump has pursued a string of defamation cases against media companies in recent years, part of a broader pattern of using the courts to challenge critical reporting.

While many of these cases have faltered, the sheer scale of the $15 billion claim reflects his willingness to confront leading news organizations directly.

For the NYT, the case is about more than just its own reporting; it is a battle over whether US libel law and First Amendment protections for journalism will hold under political pressure.