U.S. President Donald Trump has announced plans to file a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, escalating his long-running battle with major American media outlets.
The lawsuit, which he said would be filed in Florida, stems from reports linking him to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as broader accusations of bias in the newspaper’s coverage of his presidency and re-election campaign.
Trump made the declaration in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday, accusing the Times of serving as a “virtual mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
He claimed that the paper had engaged in what he described as “a decades-long method of lying” about him, his family, his businesses, the America First movement, and the nation as a whole.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops NOW,” Trump wrote.
He alleged that the newspaper’s editorial board went beyond journalism by endorsing his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in what he called “the single largest illegal campaign contribution, EVER.”
At the heart of the dispute are reports published by the Times relating to a sexually suggestive letter and risqué drawing that was allegedly given to Epstein and appears to bear Trump’s signature.
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The White House has denied the authenticity of the material, dismissing it as fabricated. Nevertheless, Trump insists that the coverage was not only false but deliberately intended to damage his reputation and political standing.
The New York Times has not yet issued an official response to Trump’s announcement. However, legal observers note that defamation lawsuits against media organizations are notoriously difficult to win in the United States, particularly when the plaintiff is a public figure.
Under the landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, public officials must prove that defamatory statements were made with “actual malice” — knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.
Trump is no stranger to suing the press. In recent years, he has filed lawsuits against several media houses, including CBS and ABC, some of which were later settled for millions of dollars.
He has also clashed with the Associated Press, which he barred from traveling on his government aircraft after it refused to adopt his proposed renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
As the 2025 U.S. presidential election draws nearer, the lawsuit adds to the increasingly tense standoff between Trump and the mainstream press.
If formally filed, the case could become one of the largest media defamation suits in American history, with potentially significant implications for both Trump’s campaign and press freedom in the United States.
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