US President Donald Trump has said he will sue the New York Times for $15bn (£11bn) over what he called defamation and libel.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday.
He singled out the Times’ endorsement of Kamala Harris in the last presidential election in 2024, saying it had become a “mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party”.
A spokesperson for the newspaper said the suit was “an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting”, adding it “has no merit”.
“The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics,” the spokesperson added.
Trump said that his lawsuit was being launched in Florida, a Republican stronghold.
He has long expressed displeasure at what he bills left-leaning media outlets unfavourable to his presidency.
In a post late on Monday, Trump took issue at the Times’ endorsement of his election rival, saying: “Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF!”
In the post he also accused other media outlets or TV programmes of “smearing” him through “a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration”.
ABC News and Paramount’s CBS News both agreed to multimillion-dollar payouts to Trump to settle lawsuits brought by the president in recent months.
He has also launched a case against the Wall Street Journal over its reporting on the Epstein scandal.
This is not the first time Trump has sought to sue the New York Times.
In 2023, a judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by him, then an ex-president, against the New York Times, saying the claims in the lawsuit “fail as a matter of constitutional law”.
The $100m (£79m) lawsuit accused the newspaper and Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, of “an insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.
It was filed in 2021 and relates to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Trump’s financial affairs.
Trump also lost another defamation bid in 2023, when he sought in vain to sue CNN for allegedly likening him to Adolf Hitler. A federal judge later threw out the $475m (£369m) lawsuit.
By BBC News
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