Donald Trump (left) (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File); A sign for The New York Times hangs above the entrance to its building (right) (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File).
A New York state court judge schooled Donald Trump in the high cost of misunderstanding media law Wednesday by dismissing the former president’s lawsuit against the New York Times then ordering Trump to foot the bill for the defense’s legal fees.
Trump sued the newspaper and his niece, Mary Trump, over a 2018 article entitled “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches from His Father.” The article was one in a series that covered Trump’s tax avoidance, which was later awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. Trump later sued the Pulitzer board for recognizing journalists for their coverage of his misdeeds — a lawsuit deemed “cartoonishly vexatious” by legal experts.
Trump’s lawsuit over the Times tax story had its basis in a family dispute among several Trumps regarding the estate of the former president’s father, Frederick C. Trump. The probate dispute devolved into litigation and eventually, a settlement that included a non-disclosure provision.
When Donald Trump entered national politics and refused to disclose his tax returns, his financial history became a matter of public interest. Mary Trump turned certain documents that she had received during the discovery process of the probate lawsuit over to the Times, then reported Trump’s involvement in various tax schemes.
Trump sued his niece for violating the terms of the settlement agreement and sued the newspaper for tortious interference with contract and unjust enrichment, claiming that Mary Trump and reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow, and Russell Buettner, forged “an insidious plot” to divulge his private records for for the award-winning story. Trump claimed in his court filing that his niece and the Times “were motivated by a personal vendetta and their desire to gain fame, notoriety, acclaim and a financial windfall and were further intended to advance their political agenda.”
Justice Robert R. Reed of State Supreme Court in Manhattan began his ruling by noting that Trump “does not specifically dispute the truth of any of the statements made in the article” in his demand for $100 million in damages, then continued on to provide the former president a brief lesson on the First Amendment.
Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” said Reed, pronouncing the Times article within “the very core of protected First Amendment activity.” Reed dismissed the case against the Times, but has not yet ruled on the claims against Mary Trump.
Reed smacked down Trump’s case against the paper as precisely what is forbidden by New York’s 1992 anti-SLAPP statute — the law that prohibits meritless lawsuits filed simply to chill free speech via threat of costly litigation. The statute, said Reed, “was specifically designed to apply to lawsuits like this one.” What’s more, the judge noted, the statute was revised in 2020 to broaden its scope specifically in response to “abusive and frivolous” lawsuits Trump himself made a habit of filing.
Reed recounted Trump’s argument that the Times’ activities were “coercive, harassing, vindictive, misleading, purposeful, and in blatant disregard of [his] contractual rights,” then bluntly responded, “Plaintiff is mistaken.” The judge chastised Trump for raising “irrelevant” precedents and attempting to analogize his tortious interference claims to cases bereft of “any remotely similar facts.”
“Plaintiff does not cite a single case where any court, whether state or federal, has held that a reporter is liable for inducing his or her source to breach a confidentiality provision,” wrote Reed.
Reed continued and said even if the Times’ reporting would have constituted tortious interference with Trump’s settlement agreement, it was justified by the need to report on a newsworthy story — and that justification is an “absolute defense.”
To underscore the point, Reed offered the reality television personality-turned-president a precedent involving tabloid talk show host Maury Povich. A New York court dismissed a tortious interference claim against Povich for inducing a woman to speak about a confidential provision in her divorce agreement. In the Povich case, “the court adopted the defendants argument that the First Amendment freedom of the press to report on newsworthy subjects is an appropriate justification that will preclude a claim of tortious interference” (see here for an example of how the Povich case has been cited in another media case).
Reed also made short work of Trump’s claim that the Times was “unjustly enriched” at his expense. Reed called Trump’s claim “vague” and noted that Trump “refus[ed] to identify the harm he suffered,” and concluded that these failures alone warrant dismissal of the dubious claim. Reed was elected to New York’s Supreme Court 1st Judicial District in 2016.
“The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today,” said Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander. “It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine news gathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public.”
Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer, said in a statement that “we will weigh our client’s options and continue to vigorously fight on his behalf,” though she did not say whether she planned to appeal Reed’s ruling.
You can read the full ruling here.
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