On Monday, US President Donald Trump filed a defamation suit against CNN. He’s seeking $475 million in exemplary damages.
In a lawsuit filed with a US District Court in Florida, Trump said that CNN was waging a “campaign of libel and slander” against him because it “fears” he may run for president again in 2024.
In the 29-page complaint, Trump’s lawyers claimed that CNN used its great authority as an allegedly “trusted” news source to disparage the plaintiff in the eyes of its viewers and readers in order to defeat him politically.
Trump indicated on Monday that we will be initiating legal action against multiple additional fake news media organizations in the coming weeks and months for their lies, slander, and wrongdoing, especially in their coverage of the 2020 election.
The 76-year-old Republican also threatened legal action against the legislative panel investigating his supporters’ January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, alleging the panel refused to investigate “the huge Presidential Election Fraud” that he alleges occurred.
During his administration, Trump, who requested a jury trial, had a fractious relationship with CNN and other major news outlets such as The New York Times, labeling them “fake news” and often raging against them on social media.
The former president accused CNN of participating in a systematic conspiracy to move the political balances to the left in the case. The former president has often hinted at another run for the presidency.
CNN, he claims, has tried to “taint” him with a series of scandalous, false, and defamatory names, including “racist,” “Russian lackey,” “insurrectionist,” and, finally, “Hitler.”
In a July statement, Trump vowed to sue CNN if the network did not delete allegedly libelous allegations about him.
The lawsuit referenced a piece of CNN’s answer to Trump, in which it refused to disavow any of its reporting and stood by it.
In his lawsuit filed on Monday, Trump also chastised CNN for labeling his claims that Democrat Joe Biden “stole” the 2020 election as the “Big Lie.”
According to the complaint, the “Big Lie” is an obvious reference to a technique utilized by Adolf Hitler and outlined in his book Mein Kampf. The term is not flung about lightly or carelessly.
CNN, according to the complaint, utilized the “Big Lie” on purpose to associate the plaintiff to one of the most heinous people in recent history.
It stated that the term “Big Lie” has been used more than 7,700 times in regard to Trump on CNN since January 2021.
Trump said that he filed the case to protect his reputation as a dedicated public servant and to hold CNN responsible for the harm its false, defamatory, and inflammatory mischaracterizations of him caused.
