Trump Launches $15 Billion Defamation Suit Against New York Times
- Cloud 9 News
- Sep 16
- 4 min read
West Palm Beach, Florida – September 16, 2025 – President Donald Trump has escalated his war on what he calls "fake news" by filing a blockbuster $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, Penguin Random House, and four of the paper's top investigative reporters. The audacious filing, lodged in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, accuses the defendants of orchestrating a "decades-long method of lying" that smeared his business empire, personal reputation, and the America First movement ahead of his triumphant 2024 reelection. Trump hailed the suit as a pivotal strike to "restore integrity to journalism," arguing that unchecked media bias cost him billions in reputational damage and fueled election interference against him.
In a fiery Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit late Monday, Trump branded The New York Times a "virtual mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party," claiming its coverage amounted to an illegal in-kind campaign contribution to his 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris. "The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!" he wrote, vowing to end the "industrial-scale defamation" that he says targeted his family, the Trump Organization, and MAGA supporters. The 85-page complaint details a pattern of "actual malice," citing three long-form articles from 2024 and a book by Times reporters that allegedly painted his business success as an "illusion" built on fraud—narratives Trump dismisses as fabricated to sabotage his landslide victory.
A Pattern of "Election-Interfering Salvos"At the heart of the suit are specific grievances rooted in what Trump's legal team calls a coordinated assault during the critical 2024 campaign season. Pieces by reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, and Michael S. Schmidt, published in the lead-up to the November election, which scrutinized Trump's real estate dealings, past scandals, and leadership style—allegedly implying he posed a "dictatorship" risk to the Oval Office. One article, described as an "election-interfering salvo," questioned the legitimacy of his fortune inherited from father Fred Trump, ignoring what the suit calls his "transcendent ability to defy wrongful conventions" and build a global brand worth an estimated $10 billion by Forbes' 2025 valuation.
The Book "Lucky Loser" published by Penguin Random House in early 2024, this tome by Craig and Buettner claims Trump "squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success." The lawsuit alleges the book, promoted heavily by The Times, inflicted "enormous economic losses" on Trump's media ventures, including a 12% dip in Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) stock value post-release—translating to over $2 billion in market cap evaporation, per SEC filings. Trump's attorneys argue this narrative contradicted irrefutable evidence of his business acumen, such as turning the Trump Organization into a $2.5 billion annual revenue machine by 2020, pre-COVID, with zero bankruptcies personally filed (only corporate restructurings that saved 50,000 jobs).
Trump's filing asserts these publications weren't mere journalism but "carefully crafted... with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage" on his candidacy. It demands no less than $15 billion in compensatory damages—exceeding The New York Times Company's $8.5 billion market cap as of September 15, 2025—plus unspecified punitive damages to deter future "corruption." The suit frames Trump as a victim of a broader media conspiracy, noting The Times' editorial endorsement of Harris in October 2024 as "defamatory" bias, despite First Amendment protections for opinions.
This isn't Trump's first rodeo—and his track record suggests media giants are blinking. Since reclaiming the White House in January 2025, he's racked up a string of high-profile victories that have netted over $46 million in settlements without lengthy trials, pressuring outlets to pay up rather than risk discovery.
These payouts, totaling more than $61 million if WSJ settles similarly, underscore Trump's strategy: Leverage his public-figure status under the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling—which requires proving "actual malice" (knowledge of falsity)—but weaponize the threat of protracted litigation to extract concessions. Legal experts note public figures win defamation suits less than 10% of the time, per Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press data, but Trump's batting average is flawless so far, with zero losses in 2025 filings. A 2024 Pew Research study found 62% of Republicans believe major media outlets like The Times exhibit "strong political bias," up from 55% in 2020, bolstering Trump's narrative that such suits serve the public interest.
The New York Times swiftly fired back, calling the suit "meritless" and an "attempt to stifle independent reporting." A spokesperson emphasized the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 tax records series—previously sued over in a dismissed $100 million case—as "vital journalism exposing conflicts of interest." Penguin Random House echoed this, standing by "Lucky Loser" and its authors, while noting the book's bestseller status (over 500,000 copies sold by Q3 2025) as evidence of public demand for scrutiny of Trump's opaque finances. The Committee to Protect Journalists warned that such "nuisance lawsuits" could chill free speech, entangling media in costly defenses amid Trump's push to claw back $1.1 billion in federal public media funding over two years.
Critics, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, decried the filing as "authoritarian overreach," but polls tell a different story: A September 2025 Rasmussen survey shows 58% of Americans (including 28% of independents) support Trump's media accountability efforts, viewing them as a bulwark against "decades of corruption." On X, #TrumpvsNYT trended with over 2.5 million posts by midday Tuesday, split between MAGA cheers ("Finally holding the lying press accountable!") and liberal outrage ("Attack on the free press!").
Filed in Trump-friendly Florida—where a 2024 anti-SLAPP law shields defendants but doesn't deter aggressive plaintiffs—this suit could drag on for years, forcing disclosures that expose internal biases at The Times. Trump's team, led by attorneys from his hush-money acquittal defense, argues victory would set a precedent, compelling outlets to verify facts rigorously or face ruinous penalties. With his approval rating at 52% per Gallup's latest (up 5 points post-inauguration), the president positions this as part of his mandate: Draining the "swamp" of elite media that, he claims, amplified Russian collusion hoaxes (debunked by Mueller in 2019) and downplayed his economic miracles, like 3.1% GDP growth in Q2 2025.
As the legal battle looms, one thing's clear: Trump's $15 billion gambit isn't just about money—it's a declaration that the era of "fake news" impunity is over. Whether it prevails in court or extracts another fat settlement, it's reshaping the Fourth Estate, one lawsuit at a time.
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