Trump Responds to Legal Action Against the New York Times: ‘There Will Be More Coming’ | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

The author of this post is Amanda Prestigiacomo.

    President Donald Trump's campaign took legal action against The New York Times on Wednesday, filing a defamation suit against the paper for "knowingly" publishing "false and defamatory statements" with regard to the Russian "collusion" conspiracy theory back in 2019.

    Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday to address the coronavirus, reporters pressed the president about the lawsuit.

    "They did a bad thing," Trump said of the Times. "And there will be more coming," he promised, as reported by Deadline.

    "If you read it, you will see that it is much more than opinion," the president defended the suit. "It is beyond an opinion."

    As noted by The Daily Wire, the defamation suit takes aim at a Times piece published on March 27, 2019, penned by former Times executive editor Max Frankel. The piece, titled, "The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo," was published in the Times' "opinion" section, but posits that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help beat 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton "for a new pro-Russian foreign policy."

    The Trump campaign claims the Times "knowingly published false and defamatory statements" about the campaign having an "overarching deal" with Russian President "Vladimir Putin's oligarchy" to "help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton" in exchange for "a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration's burdensome economic sanctions."

    "The Defamatory Article does not allege or refer to any proof of its claims of a 'quid pro quo' or 'deal' between the Campaign and Russia," the complaint reads. "Rather, the Defamatory Article selectively refers to previously-reported contacts between a Russian lawyer and persons connected with the Campaign."

    The suit continues: "The Defamatory Article, however, insinuates that these contacts must have resulted in a quid pro quo or a deal, and the Defamatory Article does not acknowledge that, in fact, there had been extensive reporting, including in The Times, that the meetings and contacts that the Defamatory Article refers to did not result in any quid pro quo or deal between the Campaign and Russia, or anyone connected with either of them."

    "The Times' story is false," the lawsuit asserts.

    Backing their case, the Trump campaign highlights the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation did not find collusion with Russia during the 2016 election.

    The bias against the Right and President Trump is seemingly pervasive at the Times. In 2019, for example, the newspaper was forced to issue a correction to a piece smearing Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    "An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book's account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party," read a glaring correction issued from the Times, The Daily Wire noted. "The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article."