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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times is meritless, First
Amendment experts say
By Brian Stelter, Liam Reilly, CNN
Updated:
9:19 AM EDT, Wed September 17, 2025
Source: CNN
President Trump’s defamation is meritless, according to half a dozen
lawyers and First Amendment scholars who spoke with CNN.
But Trump’s chances in court are almost beside the point, some of the
experts said, because the president seems to want a political rather
than legal or financial victory.
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at
Harvard Law School, said the 85-page suit “is a statement of contempt
for truth, the American public, the judicial process, and everything
that deserves our respect in the American tradition.”
However, Tushnet said, “to pick through its legal defects, such as
the complaints about statements about Fred Trump — a deceased man who
cannot be defamed — is to ignore its purpose: to threaten any
criticism of Trump.”
Several journalism advocacy groups reached the same conclusion on
Tuesday after Trump filed the suit in federal court in Tampa, Florida.
Tim Richardson of the free expression group PEN America said the suit
was part of Trump’s “dangerous pattern of seeking to punish any
publisher that questions his narrative in hopes of draining financial
resources, instilling fear, and deterring coverage he doesn’t
like.”
The Times and a book publisher also named in the suit, Penguin Random
House, both said the suit lacked merit and vowed not to be swayed by
the presidential pressure.
What PEN America called “weaponized litigation” has been a hallmark
of Trump’s second term, with news cycle after news cycle about his
legal battles with media companies.
Trump’s latest lawsuit, in fact, touts his other pending complaint
against the Wall Street Journal, and brags about the settlement
payments that Trump secured from Disney, the parent of ABC News, and
Paramount, the parent of CBS News.
Disney and Paramount came under widespread criticism, including from
their own employees, for settling rather than defending against
Trump’s charges in court.
“It’s not that surprising that President Trump is launching another
frivolous lawsuit over journalistic coverage he doesn’t like after he
was emboldened by the settlements with Paramount and Disney,” Clayton
Weimers, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders’ branch
in the US, told CNN.
Unlike Disney and Paramount, however, The Times doesn’t have
competing business interests in the form of theme parks or movie
studios. The Times also has a history of prevailing in past lawsuits
from Trump and his re-election campaign.
The new lawsuit contains a long list of grievances, and “the vast
majority of these issues likely aren’t actionable” in court, First
Amendement scholar RonNell Andersen Jones told CNN.
“But the merit of the suit is not the story here,” she said.
“Multi-billion-dollar libel suits are famously expensive to defend,
even if the publishers are ultimately successful. My guess is the
primary goals here are to have a legal filing that acts as a manifesto
against the press, to lodge an action that will be staggeringly
expensive to defend, and to hope the suit will once again provide
leverage against a powerful source of critical investigative
reporting.”
Indeed, the legal costs could total millions of dollars, though it’s
highly unlikely that the bill would surpass the $16 million that Disney
and Paramount each agreed to pay to settle suits lodged by Trump.
Jonathan Peters, a media law professor at the University of Georgia,
said the burden is on the president and his legal team to prove
“actual malice,” meaning that “the paper published false
statements of fact with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless
disregard for their truth.”
“That’s a very high bar, and courts consistently have protected
political reporting and opinion when tied to matters of public concern
and supported by disclosed facts,” Peters said. “The reporting at
issue falls squarely within those protections and other privileges, so
the suit is unlikely to survive the early stages of litigation,
reflecting the strong First Amendment safeguards against attempts by
public officials to silence or punish critical press coverage.”
That legal reality, however, was mostly missing from the MAGA media
stories that promoted Trump’s suit against The Times.
Toward the end of the day, Trump posted on Truth Social, “I am
getting amazing feedback on my lawsuit against The New York Times. The
predominant feeling and sentiment is, ‘IT’S ABOUT TIME!’”
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