Trump Refiles $15B New York Times Lawsuit

President Trump has refiled his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, just weeks after a federal judge dismissed his original complaint for being overly lengthy. On Sept. 19, Judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to revise the lawsuit, which had clocked in at 85 pages despite only containing two defamation allegations—one on page 80, the other on page 83. Merryday said the suit also contained "many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations" and "much more, persistently alleged in abundant, florid, and enervating detail," the Guardian reports.

The judge, a George HW Bush appointee, did not weigh in on the truth of Trump's allegations but made it clear the court was not the place for "the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence" or "the protracted recitation ... of legal authority" backing Trump's claims. The new, 40-page filing again targets the Times, Penguin Random House, and three reporters—Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, and Peter Baker, though reporter Michael S. Schmidt has been dropped from the list of defendants. Trump is still seeking $15 billion in damages, plus additional punitive damages.

The New York Times reports that the amended lawsuit has removed many of the tributes to Trump, including a line that described his election win last year as "the greatest personal and political achievement in American history." The lawsuit centers on Times articles and reporting in Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, a book by Craig and Buettner.

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Trump claims the reporting wrongly described him as being "discovered" for The Apprentice when he was already famous, and disputes the book's depiction of his wealth as a product of "fraudulent tax evasion schemes" by his father. "As we said when this was first filed and again after the judge's ruling to strike it: This lawsuit has no merit," a Times spokeswoman said Thursday night. "Nothing has changed today. This is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention, but the New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics."