defamation lawsuit

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.  — A Florida federal judge on Friday tossed out a $15-billion defamation lawsuit filed by President Trump against The New York Times.

U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday ruled that Trump’s 85-page lawsuit was overly long and full of “tedious and burdensome” language that had no bearing on the legal case.

“A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally,” Merryday wrote in a four-page order. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner.”

The judge gave Trump 28 days to file an amended complaint that should not exceed 40 pages.

The lawsuit named four Times journalists and cited a book and three articles published within a two-month period before the last election.

The Times had said it was meritless and an attempt to discourage independent reporting. “We welcome the judge’s quick ruling, which recognized that the complaint was a political document rather than a serious legal filing,” spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said Friday.

Merryday noted that the lawsuit did not get to the first defamation count until page 80. The lawsuit delves into Trump’s work on “The Apprentice” TV show and an “extensive list” of Trump’s other media appearances.

“As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” wrote Merryday, an appointment of former President George H.W. Bush. “Although lawyers receive a modicum of expressive latitude in pleading the claim of a client, the complaint in this action extends far beyond the outer bound of that latitude.”

The lawsuit named a book and an article written by Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig that focuses on Trump’s finances and his pre-presidency role in “The Apprentice.”

Trump said in the lawsuit that they “maliciously peddled the fact-free narrative” that television producer Mark Burnett turned Trump into a celebrity — “even though at and prior to the time of publications defendants knew that President Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business.”

The lawsuit also attacked claims the reporters made about Trump’s early business dealings and his father, Fred.

Trump also cited an article by Peter Baker last Oct. 20 headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment.” He also sued Michael S. Schmidt for a piece two days later featuring an interview with Trump’s first-term chief of staff, John Kelly, headlined “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”

Trump has also sued ABC News and CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” both of which were settled out of court by the news organizations’ parent companies. Trump also sued The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Anderson writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump filed a $15-billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists on Monday, according to court documents.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”

“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.

The New York Times did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment early Tuesday.

In a Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused The New York Times of lying about him and defaming him, saying it has become “a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”

Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a $10-billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Fox News host Jesse Watters acknowledged Thursday that his program made a mistake in reporting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s phone conversation with President Trump during last month’s immigration raids in Los Angeles.

Newsom filed a $787-million defamation lawsuit against Watters and Fox News on June 27 after the host reported on comments Trump made about a phone call with the governor as tensions heated up over the raids and the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard.

Newsom’s lawsuit said Watters lied on his prime-time program about the timeline of his conversations with the president.

After the lawsuit was filed in a Delaware court, Newsom’s lawyers said they were prepared to drop the suit if the governor got a retraction and a formal on-air apology. The suit claims Fox News willfully distorted the facts about the Trump call to harm the governor politically.

Asked for a reaction to Watters’ remarks about the matter, Newsom showed no signs of backing down. “Discovery will be fun,” he said in a statement. “See you in court buddy.”

Watters’ on-air persona is snarky and tongue-in-cheek and he did not deviate from it when he addressed the Newsom matter. He acknowledged he misunderstood Newsom’s social media post on Trump’s remarks and used the words “I’m sorry.” But it was far from a fulsome apology.

“Fox News invited [Newsom] on the show to talk it out man to man, but he said no,” Watters said.

The dust-up began after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on June 10 that he spoke to Newsom “a day ago — called him up tell him you’ve got to do a better job, you’re doing a bad job.” Trump’s comment gave the impression that the two spoke on the same day 700 Marines were deployed in Los Angeles.

Newsom refuted the claim in a post on X. The governor had already said publicly he spoke to Trump after midnight Eastern time on June 7 and the National Guard was not discussed. They never spoke after that.

“There was no call,” Newsom posted on X. “Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

Trump sent Fox News anchor John Roberts a screen shot showing the June 7 date stamp of the phone call, which Watters showed on his program to assert that Newsom was lying when he said they did not speak.

When Watters showed a clip of Trump’s June 10 comments about the call on his program, it omitted the portion where the president said he spoke to Newsom the previous day. A banner at the bottom of the screen read: “Gavin lied about Trump’s call.”

Watters told viewers Thursday he believed Newsom’s X post asserted that the two had not spoken at all.

“‘Not even a voicemail’ — we took that to mean there was no call ever,” Watters said.

“We thought the dispute was about whether there was a phone call at all when he said without qualification that there was no call,” the host continued. “Now Newsom’s telling us what was in his head when he wrote the tweet. He didn’t deceive anybody on purpose, so I’m sorry, he wasn’t lying. He was just confusing and unclear. Next time, governor, why don’t you say what you mean.”

The $787-million figure in the lawsuit is the amount Fox News paid to Dominion Voting Systems to settle another defamation case in 2023. Fox agreed to pay the company, which said the network aired false claims that its voting equipment was manipulated to help President Biden win the 2020 election.

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

Critics of President Trump may have cheered the defamation lawsuit filed by Gov. Gavin Newsom against Fox News for giving the White House a spoonful of its own litigious medicine.

Newsom is suing the conservative-leaning network alleging it intentionally distorted the facts in its reports on the timeline of the governor’s conversations with Trump amid the deployment of the National Grard in Los Angeles during immigration raids in the city.

But legal experts are concerned that it may just be the bipartisan escalation of an ongoing trend: use of defamation suits as a political weapon. The tactic, largely used by Trump and his allies until Newsom’s salvo, has put the media business and its legal defenders on high alert.

“There has been an outbreak of defamation lawsuits over the last 10 years since President Trump came on the scene and threatened to open up the liable laws,” said Ted Boutros, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. “It has been remarkable and has a chilling effect on speech.”

Trump has aggressively used the courts to punish media outlets he believes have crossed him.

Trump extracted $15 million from ABC News after George Stephanopolous said the president was convicted of rape rather than sexual abuse in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll. He’s pushing for a massive payment from CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview he claims was edited to make former Vice President Kamala Harris more coherent.

Although CBS denies Trump’s claims and 1st Amendment experts say the case is frivolous, the parties are reportedly headed for a settlement.

Trump is also continuing his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register over a poll that showed him losing Iowa in the 2024 election, moving it to state court Monday after the case appeared to be faltering at the federal level.

Trump hasn’t stopped there.

Last week, he threatened CNN and the New York Times with legal action over their coverage on an early intelligence report that said the military attack on Iran’s nuclear program had only set it back a few months. On Monday, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on border policy, called for the Department of Justice to investigate CNN for reporting on the existence of an app that alerts users to ICE activities.

“We have crossed over into a new world,” said Lee Levine, a retired 1st Amendment attorney whose clients included CBS News. “Everybody has taken note and tried to position themselves the best that they can to weather the assault.”

Newsom, a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, took his shot last week with a suit alleging Fox News intentionally manipulated its coverage of a late-night June 6 phone call he made to Trump. Trump later falsely stated on June 10 that the two were in contact “a day ago,” while Newsom asserted they never spoke after June 6.

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

The governor’s legal team alleged the conservative network’s coverage covered up Trump’s false statement that the two had spoken on June 9 while a banner on the bottom of the screen said “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”

The suit asks for $787 million — the amount Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems to settle its defamation case over false statements — if Newsom doesn’t get a retraction and on-air apology from host Jesse Watters who presented the segment on the calls. (Fox News has called the suit a publicity stunt and said it will fight it in court.)

Andrew Geronimo, director of the Dr. Frank Stanton First Amendment Clinic at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, believes Newsom’s actions are tailored to get the public‘s attention rather than that of the court itself. Newsom has been aggressive in his efforts to combat misinformation disseminated by right wing media outlets, and the lawsuit clearly turned it up a notch.

Experts say high-profile politicians have the ability to get their message out without going to court. “The idea that there is this dollar amount in the millions that they’ve been damaged by the reporting rather than coming out there and account the facts straightforwardly I think is sort of laughable,” Geronimo said.

The calls for possible legal actions against journalists reporting on information leaked by government officials, as is the case in the Iran intelligence stories, is considered a far more troubling development.

The long-term danger is that the suits can ultimately weaken laws that protect press freedoms, such as the ability to publish government information as long as it was obtained in a lawful matter.

“With everything the U.S. Supreme Court has been doing lately, all of these press protections could be on the table,” Geronimo said. “Journalists for years have relied on Supreme Court case law that, if someone leaks something to them, they can publish it as long as they did not participate in the illegal collection of it.”

The chilling effect could be particularly acute for large publicly owned media companies that have business before the government. It’s unlikely that CBS parent Paramount Global would settle over “60 Minutes” if it did not have an $8 billion merger deal pending that requires approval of the Federal Communications Commission now led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr.

“The fusion of libel suits and government officials in office is a pernicious development,” said Boutros. “When you have the president of the United States… wielding defamation suits when they have some degree of power over those companies that they can assert, that puts the companies in a terrible position.”

It also puts more strain on the legal system. While Trump and Newsom are getting headlines, Boutros noted there are similar politically motivated defamation cases coming in with “useless claims that we have to litigate.”

“It’s costly for people who are just participating in a public debate,” he said. “We’d rather have less business and more freedom of the press.”

There’s a line in Eric Coomer’s defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, that strikes me as the perfect description of what happens when influential partisans belch lies about innocent people in these insanely charged political times:

“The real world consequences for the subjects of those lies,” says the lawsuit, “have been devastating.”

Indeed.

Think of Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, whose lives were destroyed when Rudy Giuliani, once President Trump’s top campaign lawyer, claimed the pair had rigged the 2020 election outcome in their state. Giuliani even invented a blatantly racist story about the women passing drugs to each other at their Fulton County polling place. Trump amplified the claims. The two women received death threats, were loath to leave home even for groceries and had to go into hiding. I will never forget how sad and broken they seemed during their testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Happily, Freeman and Moss won a $148-million settlement from Giuliani, leading the former New York mayor to unsuccessfully sue for bankruptcy in an effort to dodge his obligation. Now stripped of his license to practice law in New York, Giuliani has fallen so far he’s not even a punchline on late night TV anymore.

Just like Freeman and Moss, Coomer, the former director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, was subjected to a torrent of false claims about election rigging by Lindell and other right-wing conspiracy theorists and media outlets. Like Freeman and Moss, he was terrorized and driven into hiding.

He left his job, moved to a new location, placed guns around the house he borrowed from a friend, experienced depression and panic attacks, and believes he will not be able to return to his profession.

“People were essentially taking bets on how my brother’s corpse would be found and which nefarious shadow group would be behind his death,” Coomer’s brother told the New York Times in 2021. “He would be executed by the state or he would be found with a falsified suicide note and two gunshots in the back of his head.”

Coomer, like others, became collateral damage in the misbegotten MAGA campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Fox News hosts, including Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, completely lost their minds, and the company allowed its highest-profile stars to spew lie after lie about the election in general and Dominion Voting Systems in particular, knowing full well (as News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath) that Dominion was blameless and that Joe Biden had won fair and square.

That unsavory chapter ended up costing Fox $787.5 million in a settlement to Dominion, which allowed the right-wing network to avert a trial.

Coomer, who has filed lawsuits against Giuliani and several others who spread lies about him, now gets his day in court against Lindell. The defamation trial, which began Monday, is expected to last through the end of this week. (Coomer settled suits against conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell; Newsmax; One America News Network, or OAN; and an OAN correspondent. His suit against Guiliani is pending.)

The false claims against Coomer were dreamed up by a conservative Colorado podcaster, Joseph Oltmann, who told listeners that he had infiltrated an “Antifa conference call” in which “Eric, the Dominion guy” claimed to have rigged the election against Trump. (Coomer’s defamation suit against Oltmann is also pending.)

“Oltmann,” says Coomer’s lawsuit, “claimed this supposed call happened on some unspecified date months before the election, but that he did not think to take action until after the election was called for President Biden …. Oltmann’s story is inherently implausible.”

Not to mention, outlandish and preposterous.

In his campaign against Coomer, Oltmann posted a photo of the Dominion executive’s home on his social media and urged his followers to “blow this sh— up. Share, put his name everywhere. No rest for this sh—bag … Eric we are watching you.”

Lindell, who seems never to have come across a right-wing conspiracy theory he couldn’t embrace, picked up on Oltmann’s fantasies about Coomer and began spreading them far and wide — in interviews, on his website, in social media, etc.

On his FrankSpeech media platform, Lindell addressed Coomer directly: “You are disgusting and you are treasonous. You are a traitor to the United States of America.” (Classic case of projection, imho.)

Lindell could have settled as so many others have done. Instead, he has chosen to fight on, hawking pillows, sheets and slippers to pay his legal bills as he goes. His attorney said that because he believed what he was saying was true, it’s not defamation. “It’s just words. All Mike Lindell did was talk,” Lindell’s attorney told the jury. “Mike believed that he was telling the truth.”

Before the trial, Lindell stood on the federal courthouse steps in Denver and proclaimed that his only goal in all this was to ban electronic voting machines and replace them with paper ballots.

“If we can get there,” he said, “I would sacrifice everything.”

If Coomer wins his defamation case against Lindell — and I really hope he does — Lindell will have lost a lot and gained very little. First, the case has nothing to do with the validity of voting machines. Second, an estimated 98% of American voters already cast ballots that leave a paper trail because that’s one way voting machines record votes.

But Lindell, like so many of his MAGA compatriots, still won’t let reality stand in the way of Trump’s Big Lie.

@rabcarian.bsky.social Threads: @rabcarian

CNN’s chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, whose 2021 story on a military contractor led to a defamation suit loss in court, announced Monday he is leaving the network.

“Tough to say goodbye but it’s been an honor to work among the very best in the business,” Marquardt wrote on X. “Profound thank you to my comrades on the National Security team & the phenomenal teammates I’ve worked with in the US and abroad.”

Earlier this year, a Florida jury awarded $5 million to former CIA operative Zachary Young after a jury found he was defamed in a November 2021 report by Marquardt on how Afghans were being charged thousands of dollars to be evacuated after the U.S. military withdrawal from their country.

After deliberations began on punitive damages, CNN attorneys reached an undisclosed settlement with Young.

A CNN representative declined to comment on Marquardt’s departure, calling it a personnel matter. One network insider who was not authorized to comment publicly said there was a feeling among many people at CNN that Marquardt had to go after the loss in court.

Marquardt has served as CNN’s chief national security correspondent since 2017. He was previously a foreign correspondent for ABC News.

Young lives in Vienna and has his business based in Florida. He was seeking $14,500 for getting people out of Afghanistan after the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal. He claimed his services were limited to corporate sponsors.

The business was described in Marqurdt’s report alongside interviews with Afghans who spoke about desperate efforts by people to escape, but they had no connection to Young.

Young’s suit said his inclusion in the story, which used the term “black market” in an on-screen banner, implied that his activity was criminal, even though Marquardt’s segment made no such charge. “Black market” was also used in the introduction of the report when it first ran on “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” other CNN programs and the network’s website and social media accounts.

CNN lawyers argued that the term “black market” was used to describe an unregulated activity, even though the dictionary definition describes it as illegal.

Young claimed the story destroyed his reputation and ability to earn a living — driving his annual income from $350,000 to zero — and caused severe emotional and psychological distress.