By J.C. Bruce
The last time a president won a libel lawsuit against a newspaper or other news outlet was in 1913.
But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump from trying, and until this weekend he had at least three lawsuits pending in Florida federal courts alleging billions of dollars in damages.
Now there are only two.
That’s because on Saturday, U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal with prejudice—meaning he can’t refile it. The judge ruled that Trump was “grasping at straws” and that the suit tried to “manufacture” flaws in the newspaper’s reporting.
You can read a full account of that in this report:
‘Grasping at straws’: Judge dismisses Trump suit against Wall Journal
The suit involved the Journal’s publication of a birthday card Trump allegedly sent to his pal, the deceased child molester Jeffrey Epstein. You remember it. This one that referred to Trump and Epstein’s “wonderful secret.”
The two remaining lawsuits pending in Florida are against the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and The New York Times. Trump wants $10 billion from the BBC and $15 billion from the Times.
(It’s possible he may want payment in gold bars so he can continue his Oval Office redecorating, but that’s a subject for another time.)
In The New York Times lawsuit, in addition to the newspaper, Trump is suing several reporters and publisher Penguin Random House over campaign coverage and the book Lucky Loser. Trump claims they sabotaged his campaign.
(And here we thought he lost because—as he endlessly continues to blather—the election was rigged.)
District Judge Steven D. Merryday dismissed the original 85-page complaint for being less a lawsuit than a political screed. It’s been refiled twice, and the Times continues to ask the court to dismiss the suit as meritless.
Trump's suit against the BBC is on the brink of dismissal, with Judge Enjolique Lett giving Trump a December deadline to sit for a videotaped seven-hour deposition or she may impose sanctions and throw out the case. This suit involves Trump's claim that the BBC's editing of the speech he delivered before the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection was malicious. The BBC has apologized, but contends it does not constitute libel.
In all these cases, legal experts widely regard the amounts Trump is seeking as frivolous.
"Given that he won the presidency after this and has continued to make money in his businesses, it seems implausible that he's going to be able to prove a billion dollars worth of damages," said Professor Lyrissa Lidsky of the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
If history is a guide, he won’t succeed.
The only time a president won a libel lawsuit was when Theodore Roosevelt filed a claim against a small Michigan newspaper called the Iron Ore, which said that Roosevelt “gets drunk … and not infrequently.”
Roosevelt brought a handful of character witnesses who testified that his favorite beverage was milk, and he won. But he didn’t ask for damages, just “six cents,” which he famously joked was “the price of a good newspaper.”
In 1913, it was also the price of a pint of beer at a local saloon. It is unknown if Truthful Teddy, as he was sometimes called, bought a paper or a brewskie after the trial.
That was then; this is now.
As Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Foundation notes about Trump:
“He doesn’t care if he wins or not. The point is to intimidate and punish those he views as critical to him.”
Trump likes to call the news media “the enemy of the people,” a phrase he borrows from the likes of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler.
And while Trump’s lawsuits make big headlines, newspapers and other media outlets fight every day against the government’s corrupt efforts to keep the public in the dark.
Two headline issues come to mind here in Florida—the $10 million misspent in the Hope Florida scandal and the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on Alligator Alcatraz.
Two candidates on Tuesday’s ballot have their fingerprints all over the Hope Florida debacle—James Uthmeier, running for attorney general, and Ashley Moody, trying to keep her appointed U.S. Senate seat.
How do we fight this corruption?
First, vote.
Also, I would add, selfishly, keep supporting the free press.
That you are reading this means you are already doing that. Thank you.
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Isn’t it good to read that some lower courts are not so blinded and deafened as the Supreme Court often seems to be?! I hope a lot more just desserts are delivered.
Absolutely. it IS up to us to protect the first amendment which is a bedrock of democracy.