4th October, 2022
Former United States President, Donald Trump has sued the Cable News Network (CNN) for defamation, demanding $475 million in punitive damages.
CNN has been critical in reporting activities of Trump when he was president of the US and after his presidency.
The 29-page lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The suit alleged that CNN took part in a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander” that “escalated in recent months” because the network feared Trump would again run for president.
The Washington Post reports that the lawsuit took issue with CNN’s use of the words “racist” and “insurrectionist,” as well as associations made between the former president and Adolf Hitler.
The newspaper added that Trump had a history of being highly litigious against critics in the media, though these legal challenges have had little success.
In 2020, his campaign separately sued The Washington Post and the New York Times for libel over opinion pieces that linked the campaign to Russian electoral interference.
Trump’s campaign also filed a libel suit against CNN over an op-ed in 2020, which was later dismissed.