Trump’s lawsuit against the New York Times is meritless, First Amendment experts say

By Brian Stelter, Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times 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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