President Donald Trump is searching for $15 billion in damages from The New York Instances and Penguin Random Home in a defamation lawsuit that alleges the newspaper and writer engaged in a marketing campaign to wreck his repute forward of the 2024 election.
Alleging that the Instances has change into a “main, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods,” Trump’s attorneys argued {that a} collection of articles about Trump — together with a report that Trump’s former chief of employees John Kelly warned the president would rule like a dictator, an article in regards to the making of “The Apprentice,” and a report in regards to the controversy that has adopted Trump — amounted to libel.
Filed within the Center District of Florida, the lawsuit names The New York Instances and Instances reporters Peter Baker, Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and Michael Schmidt as defendants. The lawsuit additionally names Penguin Random Home — the writer of Craig and Buettner’s e-book “Fortunate Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Phantasm of Success” — as a defendant.
“As we speak, the Instances is a fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat Celebration. The newspaper’s editorial routine is now one in every of industrial-scale defamation and libel towards political opponents,” the lawsuit claimed.
Trump’s attorneys allege that The New York Instances and Penguin Random Home sought to not solely injury the president’s “hard-earned and world-renowned repute for enterprise success,” but additionally harm his possibilities of profitable the 2024 election.
“President Trump brings this go well with to spotlight that precept and to obviously state to all People exhausted by, and livid at, the many years of journalistic corruption, that the period of unchecked, deliberate defamation by the Instances and different legacy media retailers is over,” the lawsuit stated.
A New York Instances spokesperson stated the lawsuit has no advantage.
President Donald Trump speaks within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, September 15, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP through Getty Photographs
“It lacks any official authorized claims and as a substitute is an try to stifle and discourage impartial reporting,” the Instances spokesperson stated. “The New York Instances won’t be deterred by intimidation ways. We are going to proceed to pursue the information with out concern or favor and get up for journalists’ First Modification proper to ask questions on behalf of the American individuals.”
Penguin Random Home didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from ABC Information.
“President Trump’s transcendent means to defy wrongful conventions has been vividly mirrored in his profitable endeavor to revive integrity to journalism, and restore the immense injury attributable to legacy media retailers such because the Instances for the higher a part of a decade,” the lawsuit stated.
In July, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit towards The Wall Avenue Journal after the Journal reported that Trump allegedly despatched disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein a bawdy letter in 2003 that was included in a book made for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday, which Trump has denied.
In response to that go well with, a spokesperson for Journal proprietor Dow Jones stated, “Now we have full confidence within the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and can vigorously defend towards any lawsuit.”
