WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Monday filed a US$15 billion lawsuit for defamation and libel against The New York Times, days after the newspaper released articles on his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The move comes after Trump threatened last week to sue the Times for its reporting related to a sexually suggestive note and drawing given to Epstein.
“Today, I have the Great Honour of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW.”
The lawsuit filed in US District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead-up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by The New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump”.
“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.
The Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Trump accused the paper of lying about him, his family and businesses, as well as Republican-led movements and ideologies such as the “America First” movement and Make America Great Again, or Maga.
Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a US$10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July, after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York prison cell in 2019.
In July, Paramount Global reached a settlement with Trump over a lawsuit that alleged election interference by the company’s CBS news network when it showed two different versions of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice-President Kamala Harris in October.
In December, Trump reached a settlement with Walt Disney’s ABC where the TV network agreed to give US$15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation or museum. That case stemmed from allegations that one of the network’s anchors had defamed the president-elect while characterising a past court verdict against him.
Trump referenced those settlements in his latest post, claiming “long-term INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal”.
Trump has said he parted ways with Epstein before the financier’s legal troubles became public in 2006.
