OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
5:36 PM – Friday, October 17, 2025
President Donald Trump has refiled a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and three of its reporters after a judge dismissed the first filing for being lengthy and “improper.”
The 40-page filing, submitted on Thursday in Florida’s Middle District Court, is shortened from the original 85-page paper.
The document outlines Trump’s claims that The New York Times defamed him in the publication’s coverage of his business and reality television careers.
The complaint also mentions Penguin Random House, publisher of the book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success” by NYT journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
The book negatively covered Trump’s multimillion-dollar inheritance from his father as a product of “fraudulent tax evasion schemes,” claiming Fred C. Trump was “twisting the rules” of federal programs to build his wealth.
“Defendants rejected President Trump’s reasonable demands for retraction, and instead doubled down and expanded on the malicious and defamatory falsehoods,” the president’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday threw out the initial version of the suit because the document violated Rule 8 of federal civil procedure, which mandates a “short and plain statement” of the claim.
“Alleging only two simple counts of defamation, the complaint consumes 85 pages,” Merryday wrote. “Even under the most generous and lenient application of rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible.”
Trump announced the lawsuit on Truth Social in September, calling The New York Times “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the nation’s history.”
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” he wrote.
In response to the renewed lawsuit, The New York Times released a statement reading, “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.”
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