Judge Dismisses Trump’s $15 Billion Lawsuit Against New York Times and Penguin Random House

A fed­er­al judge has tossed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s $15 bil­lion defama­tion law­suitagainst The New York Times and Pen­guin Ran­dom House, call­ing the com­plaint “decid­ed­ly improp­er and imper­mis­si­ble.”

NOTE: The video is from a pre­vi­ous report.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Steven Mer­ry­day on Fri­day struck the com­plaint and gave the pres­i­den­t’s lawyers 28 days to refile their law­suit.

“A com­plaint is not a mega­phone for pub­lic rela­tions or a podi­um for a pas­sion­ate ora­tion at a polit­i­cal ral­ly or the func­tion­al equiv­a­lent of the Hyde Park Speak­ers’ Cor­ner,” Mer­ry­day wrote.

In the law­suit, which was just filed on Tues­day, Trump’s attor­neys alleged that the Times has become a “lead­ing, and unapolo­getic, pur­vey­or of false­hoods,” argu­ing that a series of arti­cles about Trump — includ­ing a report that Trump’s for­mer chief of staff John Kel­ly warned the pres­i­dent would rule like a dic­ta­tor, an arti­cle about the mak­ing of “The Appren­tice,” and a report about the con­tro­ver­sy that has fol­lowed Trump — amount­ed to libel.

Judge Mer­ry­day, in a blis­ter­ing four-page rul­ing, said he was throw­ing out the suit because it “unmis­tak­ably and inex­cus­ably” vio­lates the rules that gov­ern civ­il law­suits.

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“A com­plaint is a short, plain, direct state­ment of alle­ga­tions of fact suf­fi­cient to cre­ate a facial­ly plau­si­ble claim for relief and suf­fi­cient to per­mit the for­mu­la­tion of an informed response,” he wrote. “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.”

In toss­ing the suit because Trump’s com­plaint was pro­ce­du­ral­ly improp­er, the judge did not weigh in on the mer­its of Trump’s defama­tion claim, giv­ing his lawyers 28 days to refile it in a “pro­fes­sion­al and dig­ni­fied man­ner.”

Mer­ry­day, who was appoint­ed by Pres­i­dent Geroge H. W. Bush, said the com­plaint con­tains eighty pages of repet­i­tive claims and praise for Pres­i­dent Trump, but fails to estab­lish the two counts of defama­tion alleged. He lam­bast­ed Trump’s lawyers for forc­ing him to “labor through” the “super­flu­ous” praise about Trump’s show “The Appren­tice,” as well as the size of his real estate empire and the “his­toric fash­ion” of Trump’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial victory.&

“Even assum­ing that each alle­ga­tion in the com­plaint is true … a com­plaint remains an improp­er and imper­mis­si­ble place for the tedious and bur­den­some aggre­ga­tion of prospec­tive evi­dence, for the rehearsal of ten­den­tious argu­ments, or for the pro­tract­ed recita­tion and expla­na­tion of legal author­i­ty puta­tive­ly sup­port­ing the plead­er’s claim for relief,” the judge wrote. “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.”

Filed in the Mid­dle Dis­trict of Flori­da, the law­suit named The New York Times and Times reporters Peter Bak­er, Russ Buet­tner, Susanne Craig, and Michael Schmidt as defen­dants. The law­suit also named as a defen­dant Pen­guin Ran­dom House, the pub­lish­er of Craig and Buet­tner’s book “Lucky Los­er: How Don­ald Trump Squan­dered His Father’s For­tune and Cre­at­ed the Illu­sion of Suc­cess.”

“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 law­suit claimed.

Trump’s lawyers allege that The New York Times and Pen­guin Ran­dom House sought to not only dam­age the pres­i­den­t’s “hard-earned and world-renowned rep­u­ta­tion for busi­ness suc­cess,” but also hurt his chances of win­ning the 2024 elec­tion.

A New York Times spokesper­son said Tues­day that the suit had no mer­it.

“It lacks any legit­i­mate legal claims and instead is an attempt to sti­fle and dis­cour­age inde­pen­dent report­ing,” the Times spokesper­son said. “The New York Times will not be deterred by intim­i­da­tion tac­tics. We will con­tin­ue to pur­sue the facts with­out fear or favor and stand up for jour­nal­ists’ First Amend­ment right to ask ques­tions on behalf of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

“This is a mer­it­less law­suit,” said a Pen­guin Ran­dom House spokesper­son. “Pen­guin Ran­dom House stands by the book and its authors and will con­tin­ue to uphold the val­ues of the First Amend­ment that are fun­da­men­tal to our role as a book pub­lish­er.”

In July, Trump filed a $10 bil­lion law­suitagainst The Wall Street Jour­nal after the Jour­nal report­ed that Trump alleged­ly sent dis­graced financier Jef­fery Epstein a bawdy let­ter in 2003 that was includ­ed in a bookmade for Epstein’s 50th birth­day, which Trump has denied.

In response to that suit, a spokesper­son for Jour­nal own­er Dow Jones said, “We have full con­fi­dence in the rig­or and accu­ra­cy of our report­ing, and will vig­or­ous­ly defend against any law­suit.”