Washington, D.C. – U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, accusing the newspaper of waging a long-running campaign of “malicious” attacks against him.
The complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Florida’s Middle District, also names four Times reporters and publisher Penguin Random House as defendants. At the center of the lawsuit are three articles published between September and October last year, along with a book by reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.
According to the 85-page filing, the coverage formed part of a “decades-long pattern” of targeted defamation against Trump, 79, who returned to the White House earlier this year. It alleges the Times routinely strayed from industry norms when reporting on him, portraying him in “the most antagonistic and negative way” and failing to provide adequate opportunity for comment.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops NOW!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The filing further claims the outlet and its journalists acted with “actual malice” and “baseless hatred.”
The lawsuit follows heightened tensions between Trump and the media, with the president frequently attacking critical outlets, curbing press access, and pursuing multiple legal battles. In July, he sued Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over reporting linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That same month, Paramount paid $16 million to settle Trump’s complaint that CBS’s 60 Minutes unfairly edited a segment featuring his 2024 election rival, Kamala Harris.
In the current case, Trump is seeking no less than $15 billion in compensatory damages, as well as unspecified punitive damages.
The New York Times has not yet issued a public response to the lawsuit.
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