Trump's Defamation Lawsuits Against Media Organizations

Details

Since returning to office, President Trump has dramatically escalated a long-running pattern of defamation lawsuits against media organizations. According to an Axios analysis, Trump and his businesses have been involved in 34 media or defamation lawsuits since he launched his political career in 2015, compared to just seven in the three decades prior. By mid-2025, Axios reported that Trump already had five outstanding lawsuits against media organizations, with the pace of new filings matching the previous year's total by the halfway point—and more suits followed in the months after. The Washington Post has maintained a running tally of lawsuits as they continue to accumulate.

Kevin Goldberg, vice president at Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan First Amendment nonprofit, told Axios: "The consistent theme is his willingness to use the court system, even as a public figure and a public official, to silence people, to force them to correct statements, to just generally make them uncomfortable."

Settled Cases

The full scale of what these settlements have delivered to Trump personally became clear on June 30, 2026, when he filed his annual financial disclosure. According to CBS News's itemization of the filing—which The Wall Street Journal reported showed his personal income surging past $2.2 billion in the first year of his second term—legal settlements from media and technology companies totaled more than $86 million: $24.5 million from Meta, $22 million from YouTube, $16 million from ABC, $16 million from CBS, and $8 million from X. The YouTube and X payments resolved, like the Meta settlement, lawsuits Trump filed in July 2021 after the platforms suspended his accounts following the January 6 Capitol attack. The Washington Post also covered the disclosure, which was submitted under a 45-day extension with late fees; the White House stated "there are no conflicts of interest."

Three of the major media settlements were reached in the year after Trump won the 2024 election. Legal experts broadly considered the underlying cases to be weak on their merits.

ABC News / Disney — $16 million (December 2024). Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos after Stephanopoulos repeatedly stated on-air that Trump had been "found liable for rape" in E. Jean Carroll's civil lawsuit. A jury had in fact found Trump liable for "sexual abuse" under New York law, not rape—though the presiding judge later wrote that Carroll's description was "substantially true" given the narrow legal distinction. ABC agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's future presidential library and $1 million in legal fees. The settlement was reached the same day a judge ordered both Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit for depositions the following week, allowing both parties to avoid sworn testimony. First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN the settlement was a "major victory" for Trump, while conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote: "No, a $15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It is avoiding discovery."

Meta — $25 million (January 2025). Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit Trump filed after Facebook and Instagram suspended his accounts following the January 6 Capitol attack. Of the total, $22 million was designated for Trump's presidential library, with the remainder going to legal fees and other plaintiffs; Trump's June 2026 financial disclosure reported $24.5 million received from Meta. Trump's original suit had alleged First Amendment violations—though the First Amendment prohibits government censorship, not actions by private companies. The settlement came as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was actively courting the new administration, having donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, ended Meta's fact-checking program, and promoted Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan to lead global affairs. According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump told Zuckerberg at a November 2024 Mar-a-Lago dinner that resolving the litigation was required for Zuckerberg to be "brought into the tent."

X and YouTube — $8 million and $22 million. The companion suits Trump filed in July 2021 against Twitter (now X) and YouTube over his post-January 6 account suspensions were also settled, with Trump's June 2026 disclosure showing $8 million received from X and $22 million from YouTube.

Paramount / CBS — $16 million (July 2025). Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump's lawsuit alleging that CBS's 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an October 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The suit, originally filed for $10 billion and later amended to seek $20 billion, was based on a Texas consumer protection law typically used in false advertising cases. University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told NPR: "Am I supposed to take that seriously? I do not understand how suits that are arguably frivolous or meritless—that have very little substance and wouldn't amount to large judgment if you went to trial—are then settled for millions of dollars." The settlement did not include an apology.

The settlement drew intense criticism because Paramount was simultaneously seeking FCC approval for its $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media—approval that required sign-off from Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. The FCC approved the merger weeks after the settlement. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the settlement "bribery in plain sight," and the Writers Guild of America East called it "a transparent attempt to curry favors with an administration." The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia wrote that "a decision to settle the case for any amount of money—let alone $16 million—must be for reasons outside the four corners of the law."

The settlement triggered significant turmoil within CBS News. 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens resigned in April 2025, citing a loss of editorial independence. CBS News president Wendy McMahon resigned the following month, writing that "the company and I do not agree on the path forward."

Active Lawsuits Filed by Trump

Pulitzer Prize Board — filed December 2022. Trump sued 20 members of the Pulitzer Prize Board in Okeechobee County, Florida, over the board's 2018 National Reporting prizes awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump claims the board's statement defending the awards damaged his reputation by implying he "colluded with a hostile foreign government." The board conducted two independent reviews and concluded that "no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes."

This case is notable because it was the first of Trump's active media suits to reach the discovery phase—a stage he avoided in his other recent lawsuits by securing settlements before that point. In December 2025, the board's attorneys filed sweeping discovery demands requesting Trump's tax returns dating back to 2015, his full medical and psychological records, and any prescription medication history—all to test his claims of reputational and financial harm. In February 2026, the board demanded a "complete and unredacted copy of the Mueller Report" and all communications between Trump and the special counsel's team.

The Pulitzer Board attempted to pause the case until Trump leaves office, arguing it raises constitutional issues of a state court exercising authority over a sitting president. Both the trial court and the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected that argument, and the case proceeded. A board spokesperson stated: "The Pulitzer Board will not be cowed by the president's attempt to intimidate journalists or undermine the First Amendment."

The New York Times — $15 billion (September 2025). Trump sued The New York Times, four of its reporters, and Penguin Random House for $15 billion over investigative reporting alleging he built his fortune in part through fraud. The suit names reporters Suzanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Michael S. Schmidt, and chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. It also targets a book by Craig and Buettner, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. The Times called the lawsuit meritless, and Katie Fallow of Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute said the complaint is "full of bluster" but "short on any allegations of specific false statements of fact that would meet the rigorous standards for defamation claims brought by public figures."

The Wall Street Journal / Rupert Murdoch — $10 billion (July 2025). Trump filed suit against the WSJ, its parent company News Corp, CEO Robert Thomson, owner Rupert Murdoch, and two reporters after the paper published a story reporting that a "bawdy" letter bearing Trump's name—featuring a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman—was included in a birthday album compiled for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump denied writing the letter. Despite suing Murdoch and calling the WSJ a "pile of garbage," Trump dined with Murdoch at the White House in October 2025, three months after filing suit. As of October 2025, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss, and Trump's team responded arguing the paper "prioritize[s] gossip, clicks, and profit over truth." Dow Jones stated: "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit." Ted Boutrous, a free speech lawyer and partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, called the lawsuit "extraordinarily weak" and "somewhat nonsensical." Jesse Gessin, a lawyer with experience in defamation and First Amendment litigation, told Reuters: "Ten billion dollars is a ridiculously high number. It would be the largest defamation verdict in U.S. history."

BBC — $10 billion (December 2025). Trump sued the BBC on December 15, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, filing a 33-page complaint over its Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which aired in the U.K. in October 2024, one week before the U.S. election. The documentary spliced together two parts of Trump's January 6, 2021, speech to make it appear he said: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell." In reality, the two segments were more than 50 minutes apart in the original speech, and the line adjacent to the first passage was "we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women." The BBC acknowledged the error and apologized, with BBC Chair Samir Shah calling it "an error of judgment," but rejected Trump's demand for financial compensation. BBC Director-General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness both resigned in November 2025 over the scandal.

Legal experts expressed skepticism about the suit's viability. Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the suit "does not have any legal basis, either on defamation or jurisdictional grounds," noting the Panorama documentary did not air in the United States. The BBC said it would defend the case.

Rather than settle, the BBC has turned the litigation's machinery back on the president. In June 2026, The Telegraph reported that BBC lawyers had filed discovery demands requiring Trump to hand over his telephone logs, calendars, schedules, and diaries covering November 3, 2020, through January 20, 2021—the post-election period encompassing January 6. Trump's attorney Alejandro Brito objected that "Defendants are attempting to use this action as a vehicle to conduct a trial as to the events that occurred on January 6," calling the requests "impermissibly broad"; Trump's side also complained that discovery would drive up litigation costs. Attorney Aaron Parnas and other legal commentators noted that by suing over how his January 6 speech was edited, Trump put his actual January 6 conduct squarely at issue, making the records relevant to the lawsuit. The episode marks a strategic inversion of the pattern in Trump's earlier media suits: where ABC and Paramount paid to make litigation disappear before discovery could reach the president, the BBC—like the Pulitzer Prize Board—is aggressively using discovery against him, at the risk of exposing his January 6-era records. Trial is set for February 2027 in Florida.

The Des Moines Register / Ann Selzer — filed December 2024. Trump sued the newspaper, its parent company Gannett, and pollster J. Ann Selzer, alleging consumer fraud over a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris leading in Iowa by 3 points. Trump won the state by 13 points. Unlike his defamation suits, this case alleges violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. The case has bounced between state and federal court multiple times; Trump refiled in state court on June 30, 2025—one day before Iowa's new anti-SLAPP law took effect, which would have provided the defendants with expanded First Amendment protections. FIRE chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere called this "procedural gamesmanship."

Trump Media & Technology Group Suit

Separately from Trump's personal lawsuits, his company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) sued 20 media organizations in November 2023 for $1.5 billion, alleging they coordinated to falsely report that Truth Social had lost $73 million. The actual loss was $31 million; the discrepancy stemmed from a misreading of an SEC filing that outlets subsequently corrected. Named defendants included Reuters, MSNBC, CNBC, Newsweek, Axios, The Guardian, and others. A Florida circuit court judge dismissed the suit against The Guardian in November 2025, finding TMTG failed to show "actual malice." TMTG also lost a separate defamation suit against The Washington Post in December 2024, with the court finding the reporting had sufficient factual backing.

Legal Analysis

The damage figures Trump seeks are staggering by any measure. His active suits against the NYT ($15 billion), WSJ ($10 billion), and BBC ($10 billion) seek a combined $35 billion—and his Paramount suit was originally filed for $10 billion before being amended to $20 billion, then settling for $16 million. For context, the largest actual defamation verdict in U.S. history is the $1.4 billion judgment against Alex Jones over his Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, which Jones himself described as a sum that "can never be paid." Trump's individual suits seek seven to ten times that amount.

Under the New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) standard, public figures like the president must prove "actual malice" to win a defamation claim—meaning defendants either knew their statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This is a deliberately high bar designed to protect press freedom.

As defamation expert Jeff Snyder observed: "It's part of his brand to fight the media, that's how he built his reputation—being adverse to the media and punishing them through litigation. Whether those claims have merit—I can't point to any time where Trump has won a jury verdict in a libel case."

Northwestern University law professor Heidi Kitrosser told NPR: "It's laughable and it's an affront to the First Amendment. His concern first and foremost is to intimidate the press."

The ACLU's Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, raised concerns about the broader impact: "What really concerns me is that there's a lot of independent media out there that won't be able to absorb even the basic costs of defending against the filing."

Discovery has emerged as the strategy's structural weakness. Trump's settlements with ABC and Paramount came before either side had to produce evidence or sit for depositions—ABC settled the same day depositions were ordered. But in the two suits where defendants have refused to settle, discovery is now running in both directions: the Pulitzer Prize Board has demanded Trump's tax returns, medical records, and the unredacted Mueller Report, and the BBC has demanded his phone logs, calendars, and diaries from the weeks surrounding January 6, 2021. As his own June 2026 financial disclosure confirms, the litigation campaign has been personally lucrative—more than $86 million collected—but the remaining defendants' posture suggests the era of quick settlements may be giving way to protracted fights in which the president's own records are at stake.

Press Freedom Context

The United States dropped to 57th out of 180 countries on the 2025 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders—the lowest domestic ranking the U.S. has received since the index was first compiled in 2002.

As of late 2025, 13 lawsuits had been filed by professional journalists and media organizations against the Trump administration over press freedom violations, including suits by the Associated Press, NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Settlement Tracker

Amounts received per Trump's June 30, 2026 financial disclosure, which reported more than $86 million in media and tech settlements.

Active Lawsuit Tracker