Legal fees amounting to nearly $400k were ordered paid to The New York and its reporters.
Former President Donald Trump was ordered to pay the New York Times nearly $400,000 for bringing a “frivolous” lawsuit against the paper for its award-winning report on his family’s sketchy tax practices.
The lawsuit against the newspaper and reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner was dismissed in May after a judge ruled their Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 story was protected by the First Amendment.
“Today’s decision shows that the state’s newly amended anti-SLAPP statute can be a powerful force for protecting press freedom,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said, referring to a New York law that that bars baseless lawsuits designed to silence critics.
Rhoades HA stated that the court’s decision serves as a warning to individuals who attempt to abuse the legal system in order to suppress journalists.
Judge Robert Reed of New York determined that due to the multifaceted nature of the case and various other considerations, it was appropriate for President Trump to cover the legal fees of the New York Times and its journalists to the tune of $392,638.
Trump, 77, filed the suit in 2021, accusing the Times and his estranged niece Mary Trump of conspiring an “insidious plot” to smuggle more than 100,000 pages of confidential financial documents from the family attorney for exploration in their news articles and a book.
The 2018 story challenged his claims of self-made wealth by documenting how his father, Fred Trump, had given him at least $413 million over the decades, including through tax avoidance schemes.
In a tweet on Friday, Craig, a reporter, expressed his joy over the recent triumph against the baseless legal action he initiated against the newspaper, as well as two of his fellow colleagues and myself.
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