Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Former President Donald Trump proved Monday that his promise to hale CNN into court was sincere.
Months after first pledging to sue CNN, Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the legacy media giant, which Trump says should be forced to pay him $475 million in punitive damages and additional compensatory damage pending a jury trial.
“A lawsuit was filed today against CNN, the once prestigious news channel that has devolved into a purveyor of disinformation, defamation, and Fake News, at a level which the American Public, and indeed the World, will not even believe is possible,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “For years I have watched this take place, often in disbelief, but the time has finally come to hold CNN responsible and legally accountable for their willful deception and defamatory statements made about me.”
CNN has indicated to multiple news outlets, among them NBC News, that it will offer no comment on the lawsuit.
In the suit, Trump’s legal team alleges CNN went beyond reporting only negatively about him and “sought to use its massive influence — purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source —to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically.”
At issue is Trump’s belief that CNN had, on 34 occasions, crossed the line between criticism and defamation. Most notably, the former president objects to the network’s frequent decision to compare Trump to Adolf Hitler and to use the phrase “The Big Lie” when describing Trump’s claims about a fraudulent 2020 presidential election. The phrase is indelibly linked, historically and connotatively, to the vile history of Hitler.
“Most notably, and, the subject of this complaint, is CNN’s persistent association of the Plaintiff to Adolf Hitler and Nazism,” the complaint reads. “When labels like ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ and ‘insurrectionist’ did not have the desired effect to undermine the Plaintiff’s candidacy when running for President or the Plaintiff’s accomplishments as President, CNN upped the stakes to conjure associations between the Plaintiff and arguably the most heinous figure in modern history.”
The network’s penchant for Nazi comparisons was a deliberate attempt to damage Trump’s political future, Trump’s attorneys conclude.
“By publication of these defamatory statements, CNN has incited readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear the Plaintiff, causing injury to the Plaintiff, the Plaintiff’s reputation, and the Plaintiff’s political career,” the complaint reads.
Trump has been the originator and recipient of numerous forms of litigation since leaving office. He is currently embroiled in a well-documented criminal process with the Department of Justice over documents confiscated from his Florida home and is being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James in civil court over his business dealings in the Empire State.
He was recently unsuccessful in a bid to sue Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, ABC, and individual Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff over those parties’ claim that Trump colluded with Russia in his 2016 presidential election, a claim that has never been substantiated.
Trump alleged the defendants in that case had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a law primarily meant to criminally punish organized crime.
Monday’s suit, which at 29 pages is about one-tenth the length of Trump’s Clinton-RICO effort, might be the first of several.
Trump has announced that he planned to file many more lawsuits against additional news outlets in the weeks and months to come.