{"id":6011,"date":"2025-10-17T04:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/6011\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T04:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:48:07","slug":"trump-refiles-defamation-lawsuit-against-ny-times-seeking-15-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/6011\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Refiles Defamation Lawsuit Against NY Times Seeking $15 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLawyers for President Donald Trump<\/a> refiled a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the New York Times<\/a>, with a complaint that is less than half as long as the previous one \u2014 after a judge spiked the president\u2019s initial lawsuit for being \u201ctedious and burdensome.\u201d As before, Trump\u2019s refiled complaint seeks an astronomical $15 billion in damages.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York Times, in a statement Thursday, reiterated its position that Trump\u2019s lawsuit was meritless and said that \u201cnothing has changed\u201d with the new filing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs we said when this was first filed and again after the judge\u2019s ruling to strike it: this lawsuit has no merit,\u201d a Times spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cNothing has changed today. This is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention, but the New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump last month\u00a0sued<\/a>\u00a0the Times, several of its reporters and Penguin Random House (publisher of the book \u201cLucky Loser\u201d by two Times reporters), alleging that their reporting about the president\u2019s finances and business career defamed him. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. A few days later, a federal judge threw out Trump\u2019s suit<\/a>, calling it \u201ctedious and burdensome\u201d and saying that a complaint is not \u201ca protected platform to rage against an adversary.\u201d In the ruling, Judge Steven D. Merryday gave Trump\u2019s lawyers 28 days to refile the suit, ordering that the amended complaint be no more than 40 pages long and that it \u201caccord with the rules of procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump\u2019s refiled complaint is 40 pages (available at this link<\/a>), less than half the original 85-page complaint. The new filing is shorter, but the main arguments are the same.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs set forth below, Defendants originated and distributed these publications, and the defamatory statements about President Trump therein, with actual malice,\u201d the revised complaint says. \u201cThe statements in question wrongly defame and disparage President Trump\u2019s hard-earned professional reputation, which he painstakingly built for decades as a private citizen before becoming President of the United States, including as a successful businessman and as star of the most successful reality television show of all-time \u2014 The Apprentice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his previous ruling finding Trump\u2019s lawsuit \u201cdecidedly improper and inadmissible,\u201d Merryday said that several statements in Trump\u2019s initial complaint were unnecessary to make the president\u2019s case. For example, he wrote, \u201cin one of many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations, the pleader states, \u2018The Apprentice\u2019 represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump\u2019s singular brilliance, which captured the [Z]eitgeist of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump\u2019s suit seeks compensatory damages of at least $15 billion as well as punitive damages, as well as a \u201cretraction of the defamatory publications and statements\u201d from the New York Times and Penguin Random House.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeparately, Trump this summer sued the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, its parent companies Dow Jones and News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and two Journal reporters, alleging defamation over a WSJ story with details about a birthday letter Trump sent in 2003 to Jeffrey Epstein. According to the lawsuit, Trump is demanding \u201cnot less than $10 billion\u201d on two counts of defamation, for at least $20 billion total. Last month, lawyers for the Wall Street Journal filed a motion to dismiss the suit<\/a>, saying that Trump\u2019s suit should be thrown out because the WSJ article in question \u201cis true,\u201d noting that in response to a congressional subpoena, \u201cEpstein\u2019s estate produced the Birthday Book, which contains the letter bearing the bawdy drawing and [Trump\u2019s] signature, exactly as The Wall Street Journal reported.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other litigation, Trump also sued ABC News and CBS News\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d and reached separate $16 million settlements in each of those cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for President Donald Trump refiled a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the New York Times, with a complaint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,9,11,10,980],"class_list":{"0":"post-6011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-new-york-times"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}