Judge dismisses Donald Trump’s lawsuit against New York Times over reporting on his tax records

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A New York judge dismissed Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit against The New York Times over its reporting on his tax records and ordered the former president to pay all attorneys’ fees and legal fees. expenses incurred by the news outlet and its journalists.

New York County Supreme Court Justice Robert R. Reed ruled Wednesday that Trump’s claims against the paper and three of its reporters, regarding their Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into his undisclosed finances in 2018, did not proceed under constitutional law.

“Courts have long recognized that journalists have the right to engage in lawful and ordinary newsgathering activities without fear of tort liability because these actions are at the very core of the First Amendment’s protected activity ,” Reed wrote in his decision.

The judge further ruled that Trump failed to show any “tortious interference” when a Times journalist “gave his nephew a burner phone to talk about the records,” according to The Daily Beast.

Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit in 2021 against The Times, three journalists from the outlet (David Barstow, Russell Buettner and Susanne Craig) and his estranged niece Mary Trump. While Mary Trump”has also filed a motion to dismiss,” a “decision has not yet been issued,” according to NBC News.

The lawsuit alleges that the reporters and Trump’s nephew “engaged in a fraudulent scheme to obtain confidential and highly sensitive records that they exploited for their own benefit and used as a means of falsely -legitimate their publicized works.”

A 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning article published by The Times examined Trump’s claims that he is “a self-made billionaire,” using information provided by his nephew. The investigation found that he “received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.”

“The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today,” Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The Times, told The Guardian. “This is an important precedent that confirms that the press is protected when it engages in routine newsgathering to obtain information of great public importance.”

This is not the first time the former president has sued a news outlet. He previously sued CNN, accusing the network of playing a part in a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander against” him, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

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His campaign then sued The Times in 2019 over an op-ed suggesting a “quid pro quo” with Russian officials. Similarly, he sued The Washington Post for libel over an opinion piece linking his campaign to Russian election meddling. Both cases were dismissed.

After her uncle’s lawsuit was filed in September 2021, Mary Trump told The Daily Beast: “I think he’s a kingpin, and he’s going to throw anything over the wall that he can. It’s desperation. Walls are closing and he is throwing anything against the wall that will stick. As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the topic.”

Following a recent appearance on “Salon Talks,” Dean Obeidallah wrote that Mary Trump “understands what Donald Trump is capable of, especially now that he’s finally been charged with crimes.”

“Every day he is allowed to wander, he becomes more dangerous… Because he will reveal to people who for some strange reason do not yet believe that he can do anything, that there is no bottom and nowhere he will stop either to get of his way,” Mary Trump told Obeidallah.

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