Washington, D.C. – U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times, accusing the newspaper of running a “decades-long method of lying” against him, his family, and his political movement. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the publication “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country.”
The lawsuit, which will be filed in Florida, comes just a week after Trump threatened legal action over a Times report concerning a sexually suggestive note and drawing allegedly sent to the late Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Trump has denied any involvement with the note.
In his social media post, Trump did not provide specific details of the allegations, but broadly accused the newspaper of being a “virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.” He specifically criticized the paper’s front-page endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, which he called “something heretofore unheard of” and “the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER.”
The lawsuit names The New York Times Company and four of its journalists—Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, and Michael S. Schmidt—as defendants. The complaint also cites a book co-authored by Craig and Buettner, published by Penguin Random House, as part of the alleged campaign of defamation. The lawsuit argues that the publications were maliciously crafted to damage Trump’s reputation and “sabotage his 2024 candidacy.”
This is the latest in a series of legal battles Trump has launched against major media outlets. He has previously filed lawsuits against ABC News and CBS, both of which resulted in settlements where the networks agreed to pay millions of dollars to Trump’s planned presidential library.