On September 15, 2025, President Donald Trump launched a sweeping $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, four of its reporters, and the publishing giant Penguin Random House, igniting yet another dramatic confrontation between the former president and the American media establishment. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the lawsuit alleges a coordinated campaign of intentional and malicious defamation designed to destroy Trump’s business reputation, undermine his 2024 presidential campaign, and prejudice the public and judiciary against him.
According to court documents and Trump’s own statements on Truth Social, the suit targets several articles and one book, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, published by Penguin Random House and written by Times journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. The other reporters named in the complaint are Peter Baker and Michael S. Schmidt, both of whom have contributed to MSNBC and NBC News. Trump’s legal team contends these works were crafted with “actual malice” and published at the “height of election season to inflict maximum electoral damage.”
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” Trump declared in a Truth Social post on the day the lawsuit was filed. He further accused the Times of acting as a “virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party,” alleging that the publication had lied about his family, business, the America First movement, and the nation as a whole. Trump’s complaint asserts that the Times’ editorial board, by endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and placing that endorsement prominently on the front page, crossed an unprecedented line of partisanship.
The lawsuit singles out three long-form articles published in 2024, each of which, according to the complaint, sought to challenge Trump’s narrative of business success, revisit past scandals, and question his character—one even warning, based on interviews with former chief of staff John F. Kelly, that Trump might “rule like a dictator if he were re-elected.” The complaint also takes particular aim at the book Lucky Loser, which Trump’s lawyers claim “tried to tarnish one of President Trump’s most well-known successes” by suggesting that reality television producer Mark Burnett discovered and manufactured Trump’s celebrity persona. The lawsuit insists Trump was already “a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business” before the advent of The Apprentice.
Trump’s legal team alleges that these publications were not only inaccurate but also timed to inflict the greatest possible damage to his 2024 campaign. The complaint claims the articles and book caused “enormous” economic losses and significant harm to Trump’s brand and future financial prospects. In the filing, Trump’s lawyers wrote, “Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of high-profile legal actions Trump has taken against major media outlets since his return to the White House. In July 2025, Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch after the paper published an article about Trump’s ties to financier Jeffrey Epstein. That same month, Paramount settled a $16 million lawsuit with Trump over CBS News’ coverage on 60 Minutes, which Trump alleged had deceptively edited an interview with his 2024 rival, Kamala Harris. ABC News also agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit regarding inaccurate on-air comments by anchor George Stephanopoulos, who had mistakenly said Trump was “found liable for raping” writer E. Jean Carroll—a claim that was inaccurate under New York law, which had found Trump liable for sexual abuse, not rape.
In addition to these recent legal victories, Trump has a history of launching lawsuits against media organizations. In 2023, he lost a $100 million lawsuit against The New York Times related to his tax records, and a $475 million defamation suit against CNN, both dismissed by federal judges. Nevertheless, Trump’s willingness to take his disputes to court—and often to the public—remains undiminished.
The New York Times responded swiftly to the latest lawsuit, issuing a statement on September 16, 2025: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.” Penguin Random House, for its part, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. However, in correspondence attached to the lawsuit, Carolyn K. Foley, the publisher’s senior vice president and associate general counsel, wrote to Trump’s legal team: “The fact that the authors of the book do not share your favorable view of your client’s career does not provide the foundation for a defamation claim.”
The complaint includes letters sent by Trump’s lawyers to both The New York Times and Penguin Random House in October 2024, demanding they cease what Trump’s team described as “false and defamatory statements.” The Times’ newsroom lawyer, David McCraw, replied, defending the reporting and stating, “Little needs to be said about the rest of your letter, which is principally a litany of personal complaints about The New York Times and its reporters, punctuated with falsehoods and premised on the deeply troubling notion that anyone who dares to report unfavorable facts about a presidential candidate is engaged in ‘sabotage’ (as opposed to, say, contributing to the free exchange of information and ideas that makes our democracy possible).”
Trump’s complaint seeks no less than $15 billion in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages. The lawsuit underscores Trump’s broader campaign against what he calls “left-leaning media outlets” and his determination to confront what he perceives as systematic efforts to damage his reputation and political prospects. In his social media post, Trump said he was “proud” to hold The Times accountable for “decades of lying about him, his family and business,” and highlighted his previous settlements with Paramount and ABC as evidence of his resolve and success.
As the legal battle unfolds, it’s clear that the clash between Trump and the American media remains as fierce as ever, raising fundamental questions about press freedom, political power, and the boundaries of public discourse in the United States.
