WASHINGTON: In a defamation lawsuit against CNN, the cable news network, the former US president Donald Trump is requesting $475 million in punitive penalties.Trump argued in his lawsuit to a US District Court in Florida that CNN was running a “campaign of libel and slander” against him out of “fear” that he would run for office again in 2024.
Trump’s attorneys said in the 29-page complaint that CNN had attempted to utilise its considerable influence to discredit the plaintiff in the eyes of its viewers and readers in order to dethrone him politically. CNN had claimed to be a “trusted” news source.
Trump continued, “in the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a vast number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and misconduct,” particularly in relation to coverage of the 2020 election.
In addition, the 76-year-old Republican said his team “may bring appropriate action against” the congressional committee looking into the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021, claiming the panel refused to look into “the massive Presidential Election Fraud” that he maintains took place.
The former president, who has frequently hinted at another run for the White House, charged CNN with being part of a “concerted effort to tip the political balance to the Left” in the complaint.
A “series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory designations of “racist,” “Russian lackey,” “insurrectionist,” and ultimately “Hitler”,” he claimed, have been used by CNN to “taint” him.
Trump had threatened to sue CNN in a statement from July if the network did not retract allegedly libellous claims about him.A portion of CNN’s reaction to Trump, in which it refused to recant any of its reporting and stood by it, was quoted in the lawsuit.