Oh, she’s such a cruel ‘Old Gray Lady’
Trump campaign: Times defames us
President Trump’s reelection campaign filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times on Wednesday, accusing the newspaper of intentionally publishing fake news about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The White House stepped up its longrunning battle with the media, stating in Manhattan Supreme Court that the so-called “paper of record” needed to be held accountable for “intentionally publishing false statements against President Trump’s campaign.”
At issue was a March 27, 2019, opinion piece in the Times relating to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Moscow’s campaign of creating propaganda on social media to boost Trump’s 2016 candidacy against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The column, written by Max Frankel, a former Times executive editor, referenced a quid pro quo between Russia and the Trump campaign.
“There was no need for detailed electoral collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions,” Frankel wrote.
The Trump team, among the paper’s toughest critics, said the column went too far.
“The Times was well aware when it published these statements that they were not true,” the campaign said in the complaint. “The Times’ own previous reporting had confirmed the falsity of these statements. But the Times published these statements anyway, knowing them to be false, and knowing it would misinform and mislead its own readers, because of the Times’ extreme bias against and animosity toward the campaign, and the Times’ exuberance to improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020.”
A Times spokeswoman said, “The Trump campaign has turned to the courts to try to punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find unacceptable.
“Fortunately, the law protects the right of Americans to express their judgments and conclusions, especially about events of public importance. We look forward to vindicating that right in this case.”