The campaign to reelect President Donald Trump sued The New York Times for defamation Wednesday, saying it was responsible for an essay by a former executive editor for the newspaper that claimed the campaign made a deal with Russian officials to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In the lawsuit in state court in New York, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. said the newspaper knowingly published false and defamatory statements when the Op-Ed piece claimed the campaign had an “overarching deal” with “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy” to defeat the Democratic candidate.
The lawsuit blamed the newspaper for the essay, saying the March 2019 article headlined “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo,” by Max Frankel, said the deal called for “the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy.”
Frankel was executive editor of the Times from 1986 to 1994.
The lawsuit said Times reporters had confirmed the falsity of the statements, but the newspaper published them anyway because of its “extreme bias against and animosity toward the Campaign, and The Times’ exuberance to improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020.”
According to the lawsuit, the campaign sued to recover unspecified damages, publicly establish the truth, properly inform the newspaper’s readers and the rest of the world and to seek appropriate remedies for the harm.
While briefing the media on the COVID-19 virus Wednesday evening, Trump fielded a question about the lawsuit and said the Times piece was beyond an opinion.
Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said in a statement that the Trump campaign “has turned to the courts to try to punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find unacceptable. Fortunately, the law protects the right of Americans to express their judgments and conclusions, especially about events of public importance. We look forward to vindicating that right in this case.”
Brian Hauss, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in free speech, privacy and technology, said the lawsuit was “completely meritless.”
“A publisher cannot be held liable for commentary based on public facts. If the law were any different, President Trump himself could be held liable for asserting that the Democrats colluded with Russia,” he said in a statement.
(AP)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
6 Responses
The first amendment protects all opinions, but it does not protect statements of fact that are objectively false (and, in the case of a public figure, that the writer knew to be false, or that the writer had no reason to think were true).
That the Trump campaign made a deal with Putin seems on its face to be a statement of fact, not a mere opinion or conclusion. It is now known to be false. The question is whether the author when writing it, and the newspaper when publishing it, knew it to be false.
The most likely defense I think the NYT will take is that although it looks like a statement of fact, it’s really a conclusion based entirely on public facts, and thus a kind of opinion. Whether that succeeds depends on what kind of judge they draw, and how far up the loser is willing to appeal.
As for the Democrats colluding with Russia, that seems to be established fact, via their paid agent Christopher Steele.
He has to prove that they deliberately lied. Mere incompetence or lack of professionalism won’t win it for him. And, he’ll a New York jury. And given the speed that civil cases get processed, it is unlikely he’ll still be in office by the time it comes to trial (even if they change the constitution to allow third terms).
So president impeached is suing for defamation of his pal Putin.
Putin was 0bama’s pal. It was 0bama who promised he would be more flexible after the election, who ridiculed Romney for saying Russia is a threat, and who denied lethal aid to the Ukraine (the same aid Trump delayed for a month or so, and the Democrats were all aghast, which shows how false they are). Ever since Trump came in he has significantly toughened up US policy toward Russia, which is not at all what Putin would want. The statements in the article are clearly false; the only question is whether they can be viewed, if you squint and look sideways, as mere opinion.
rEtARD, get with the program: Trump Russian collusion was debunked even by dirty cop Robert Mueller himself, only morons with low IQ still follow Democrat talking point.
Yeah
Impeached for using a foreign government to investigate the son of a loser who can’t win a primary even with the full support of the media.
If trump really wanted to use foreign investigation to mess the election he would have investigated sanders