Judge Dumps Trump Suit vs New York Times, Orders Him To Pay All Legal Costs

A judge in New York has thrown out Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit accusing New York Times reporters of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records and has ordered him to pay all attorneys’ fees and legal expenses the Times and its reporters incurred, The Guardian reported.

Photo Insert: Robert Reed, a New York supreme court justice, said that Trump’s claims against the Times “fail as a matter of constitutional law”, which allows for reporters to engage in legal, ordinary newsgathering.

The lawsuit alleged that the newspaper sought out Trump’s niece Mary Trump and persuaded her “to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office.” Donald Trump had also made claims against his niece.

The Times’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories relied on information from Mary Trump to cast doubt on the ex-president’s claims that he was a self-made millionaire, showing that he inherited hundreds of millions through “dubious tax schemes” and showed his history of tax avoidance.

Last year, Trump sued CNN, claiming defamation and seeking $475 million in damages. In 2020, his campaign sued the New York Times and the Washington Post over opinion pieces linking him to Russian interference in the election.

The cases against the two newspapers were dismissed.

Robert Reed, a New York supreme court justice, said that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law”, which allows for reporters to engage in legal, ordinary newsgathering.

“These actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,” Reed wrote. Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, told The Guardian: “The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today. It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine newsgathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public.”

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