Former US President Donald Trump files $475 million lawsuit against CNN for defamation
Trump said CNN waged a 'libel & slander' campaign against him with false accusations.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump sued CNN for defamation on Monday, seeking $475 million in punitive damages and claiming the network had carried out a “campaign of libel and slander” against him.
Trump claims in his lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that CNN had used its considerable influence as a leading news organization to defeat him politically.
The lawsuit focuses primarily on the term “The Big Lie” about Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud that he says cost him the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
As per The Wall Street Journal, Trump accused CNN of associating him with Adolf Hitler and portraying him as a Russian lackey and a racist. The network, he alleged, has been escalating these efforts recently in the expectation that he may run for president again in 2024.
It is to be noted that over the course of his business and political career, Trump has frequently threatened to sue media organizations over news coverage.
In 2020, his re-election campaign sued The New York Times and The Washington Post over opinion articles that linked the former US President to Russian interference in American elections, The New York Times reported.
“As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the Left, CNN has tried to taint the plaintiff with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler,'” the complaint said.
In a statement, the former president said he would be filing lawsuits against other major media companies “in the coming weeks and months,” and that he could even take action against a congressional committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
The lawsuit comes as the 76-year-old former president faces considerable legal woes, including a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for retaining government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office in January 2021.
