Trump Says He Intends to Sue CNN for Defamation
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Former president Trump on Wednesday said he intends to sue CNN on the grounds that the network has repeatedly defamed him in its coverage since he announced his first 2016 presidential run.
“I have notified CNN of my intent to file a lawsuit over their repeated defamatory statements against me,” Trump wrote in a statement. “I will also be commencing actions against other media outlets who have defamed me and defrauded the public regarding the overwhelming evidence of fraud throughout the 2020 Election. I will never stop fighting for the truth and for the future of our Country!”
A July 21 letter from Trump’s legal team to CNN executives demands that the company retract or amend written digital content and on-air comments about the former president that they claim are untrue and slanderous, the Hill reported. CNN specifically spent enormous air-time decrying and debunking Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud and Democratic manipulation in the 2020 election, using phrases like “false narratives” and “baseless theories.” The lawsuit claims that such terms are “false and defamatory” on the basis that there was abundant evidence of cheating in the 2020 election.
Most of the litigation launched by the Trump campaign after November 2020 failed to advance after multiple judges rejected them owing to lack of evidence or timeliness.
“Without regard for President Trump’s genuine belief in his statements, CNN has published numerous articles characterizing him as a ‘liar’ and the purveyor of the ‘Big Lie,'” the letter to CNN reads.
The lawsuit points to a number of examples of CNN allegedly misrepresenting Trump in articles, some of which are opinion stories implying that Trump’s rhetoric fueled the January 6 Capitol riot and denouncing Trump’s accusations of election fraud in multiple swing states.
Other CNN commentary that the lawsuit said was incorrect and unfair included on-air appearances by Democratic politicians who insisted that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to guarantee Trump’s victory. Trump has already sued some of the actors involved in that scandal.
In March, Trump sued Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and multiple other parties, claiming they conspired to falsely accuse him of collusion with Russia ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
“In the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot — one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation’s democracy,” the lawsuit stated. “Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.”
In 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded that Trump’s campaign did not coordinate with Russia to influence the United States’ 2016 election.
