Donald Trump election campaign sues over ‘Putin deal’ opinion piece

Donald Trump
AP
Michael Howie27 February 2020

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is suing The New York Times for defamation over an opinion piece on Russia.

The lawsuit alleges the newspaper was responsible for an article by a former executive editor that claimed Mr Trump’s campaign for the 2016 election made a deal with Russian officials to defeat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

The president’s 2020 campaign said the newspaper knowingly published false and defamatory statements when the piece claimed there was an “overarching deal” with “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy” to defeat Ms Clinton.

The March 2019 article, The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo, by Max Frankel said the deal called for “a new pro-Russian foreign policy”, the lawsuit states.

It also claims reporters at the paper had confirmed the inaccuracy of the statements but they were published anyway. Frankel was executive editor from 1986 to 1994.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the New York Times, said: “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.”