Trump campaign sues New York Times for libel

Source: Politico | February 26, 2020 | Caitlin Oprysko

The campaign accused the Times of harboring “extreme bias against and animosity.”

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign filed a libel lawsuit against The New York Times on Tuesday, claiming an op-ed that appeared in the paper last year defamed the president by falsely suggesting there had been a conspiracy between his 2016 operation and Russian agents.

In the eight-page complaint, filed in the New York State Supreme Court, the campaign accuses the Times, with which Trump has repeatedly sparred, of harboring “extreme bias against and animosity toward” the president’s campaign and sought to sway the presidential election in November while publishing defamatory accusations “at the very least … with reckless disregard for the truth.”

In the op-ed in question, headlined “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo,” author Max Frankel asserts in part that Trump’s 2016 campaign had an “overarching deal” with Russian President “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy” in order to “help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton,” in exchange for “a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions.”

The suit argues that the op-ed contradicts reporting published by the Times’ news division on the investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian agents to interfere in the election.

Frankel’s piece was published about three weeks before the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which found insufficient evidence to show coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the lead-up to the election. But it came out three days after Attorney General William Barr released a four-page summary of the report stating as much, though Mueller himself raised issues with the way his findings were characterized in the memo.

“At the time the defamatory article was published, the public record, and the Times’ own reporting, had already confirmed what Robert Mueller would eventually conclude: that there was no ‘deal’ or ‘quid pro quo’ between the Campaign and Russia,” the complaint claims. “The Times and its writer, Mr. Frankel, consciously disregarded all such information.”

In a statement, the campaign’s senior legal adviser, Jenna Ellis, asserted that Frankel’s assertions “were and are 100 percent false and defamatory,” and that the Times published his piece knowing their inaccuracy “for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign, while misleading its own readers in the process.”

A spokesperson for the paper pushed back forcefully against the suit and expressed confidence that the Times would ultimately prevail on First Amendment grounds.

“The Trump Campaign has turned to the courts to try to punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find unacceptable,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Fortunately, the law protects the right of Americans to express their judgments and conclusions, especially about events of public importance. We look forward to vindicating that right in this case.”

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