Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
For the second time in a week, President Trump’s reelection campaign filed a defamation lawsuit against a major media outlet. The target of this lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., is The Washington Post. The allegedly defamatory statements at issue in the lawsuit come from two opinion pieces published by the Washington Post in June 2019.
One of the articles, entitled “Trump: I can win reelection with just my base,” was written by opinion writer for The Washington Post, Paul Waldman. In his piece, Waldman quipped that “who knows what sort of aid Russia and North Korea will give to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their assistance?” The President’s reelection campaign alleges in the libel complaint that the statement is false and defamatory because no one associated with the campaign has made any statements inviting assistance from Russia or North Korea in the upcoming election.
The other article, entitled “Trump just invited another Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is making one more likely,” was also penned by an opinion writer at the Washington Post. This second piece “contained the defamatory claim that Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the Campaign ‘tried to conspire with’ a ‘sweeping and systematic’ attack by Russia against the 2016 United States presidential election,” the complaint alleges. The complaint argues that statements concerning the conclusion of the Mueller report are false and that “[i]n fact, Special
Counsel Mueller’s Report . . . came to the opposite conclusion.” Trump’s campaign argues that the Mueller Report actually concluded that there was no conspiracy between then-candidate Trump’s campaign and Russia or any coordination with Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. Continue reading ›