3 hours ago
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A federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin and two Times reporters, and said the suit was filled with “vituperation and invective” and violated civil procedure in federal cases for failing to get to the point.
US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida will allow the president to refile and amend the action within 28 days, however.
Merryday cited Rule 8(a) of the federal rules of civil procedure requiring a complaint include a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief to disqualify the filing.
“Alleging only two simple counts of defamation, the complaint consumes eighty-five pages,” Merryday wrote. “Count I appears on page eighty, and Count II appears on page eighty-three … Even under the most generous and lenient application of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible.”
Merryday noted the “many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations,” and “much more, persistently alleged in abundant, florid, and enervating detail”.
The judge’s order does not address the truth of the allegations nor the validity of the claims, but said “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.”
Trump launched the lawsuit earlier this week accusing the major US news publication and Penguin of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic party and of “spreading false and defamatory content” about him.
His suit, filed on Monday in federal court in Florida, focuses on the publication of a set of news articles in the New York Times describing his work on the television show The Apprentice and stories derived from the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by the New York Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
The suit argues that the description of Trump as having been “discovered” as a potential host for the show is factually incorrect because Trump had long been famous before the show began. It also argues that reporting in the book described Trump’s multimillion-dollar inheritance from his father Fred C Trump as a product of “fraudulent tax evasion schemes”, and that Trump’s father had been “twisting the rules” of federal programs used to support returning second world war veterans to build his fortune.
Other complaints Trump alleges are false and defamatory in the suit include the Times’s reporting on Trump’s conduct in school, the value of his real estate deals and that he had been investigated for ties to the mafia and money laundering.
“The Times has betrayed the journalistic ideals of honesty, objectivity, and accuracy that it once professed,” it states, also accusing the Times of being “a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump”.
A spokesperson for the New York Times said: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favour and stand up for journalists’ first amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
Reuters contributed reporting
