Trump campaign sues The New York Times for libel over Russia opinion article

President Donald Trump’s campaign sued The New York Times for libel over an opinion article, saying the newspaper published its allegedly false claims last year with the “intentional purpose” of damaging Trump’s chances for reelection this year.

The campaign said that The Times falsely reported “as fact a conspiracy with Russia” in the op-ed written by Max Frankel, which was published on March 27, 2019 under the headline “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo.”
Frankel is a former executive editor of the newspaper.

The lawsuit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, claims “millions” of dollars in damages, but does not give a specific monetary amount.

Among other things, the suit alleges that the newspaper “has engaged in a systematic pattern of bias” against Trump’s campaign, which is designed to damage the campaign’s reputation and cause it to fail.
A Times spokesman said, “The Trump Campaign has turned to the courts to try to punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find unacceptable.”

“Fortunately, the law protects the right of Americans to express their judgments and conclusions, especially about events of public importance. We look forward to vindicating that right in this case,” the spokesman said.
Frankel declined to comment.

“No, I’m going to leave that to The Times,” he told CNBC.
The so-called subhed, or secondary headline on Frankel’s article said: “The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy.”

Frankel wrote, in the article’s first paragraph, that during the 2016 election, “There was no need for detailed electoral collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions.”

Read More...