President Donald Trump said he is bringing a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night.
The lawsuit is being filed in Florida, Trump said.
The White House and the Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the Tampa division of the Middle District of Florida. Brito represented Trump when he sued ABC News and The Wall Street Journal for defamation. ABC News paid Trump a $15 million settlement last year.
In the court filing, Trump’s lawyers said the Times had been trying to “destroy his reputation as a successful businessman, and subject him to humiliation and ridicule.”
The filing cited several articles about Trump published by the Times last year. It also took aim at “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” a book written by two Times reporters, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. Craig, Buettner, and their publisher, Penguin Random House, were listed as defendants alongside the Times.
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“The Book and Articles are part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the court filing.
“Today, the Times is a fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. The newspaper’s editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents,” the filing said.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
This isn’t the first time Trump has sued the Times. In 2021, he filed a lawsuit against the paper, accusing the Times and its reporters of conspiring with his niece, Mary Trump, to obtain his tax records. Craig and Buettner were two of the three reporters named in Trump’s lawsuit.
Justice Robert Reed of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan dismissed the suit in May 2023 and ordered Trump to pay the outlet and its reporters their legal fees. In January 2024, Reed said Trump owed the Times and its reporters $392,638.69 in legal expenses.
