US President Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit in a Florida federal court against The New York Times (NYT) and book publisher Penguin Random House.
The complaint pertains to the book “The Luckiest Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” and three “false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging” articles. The plaintiff believes these publications were aimed at undermining his chances in the 2024 presidential election.
The lawsuit also accuses the newspaper and publisher of damaging Trump’s business and personal reputation, particularly affecting the financial prospects of the Truth Social platform and the TRUMP cryptocurrency project.
The NYT stated that the lawsuit lacks legal merit and is an attempt to suppress independent journalism. Penguin Random House also called the accusations baseless, affirming its support for the book and its authors.
In a recent article, NYT journalists suggested that the president’s family projects, including cryptocurrency ventures, might conflict with US interests.
The publication highlighted two major deals involving the UAE government. The first involved direct investments by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s MGX fund in the stablecoin World Liberty USD1. Its entire issuance was used to finance a $2 billion deal between the UAE and Binance.
The second agreement was made just two weeks later, when the Trump administration allowed the UAE to purchase hundreds of thousands of advanced and scarce computer chips, despite concerns about their potential diversion to China. Meanwhile, the NYT reported that White House and World Liberty representatives deny any connection between the two deals.
President’s son Eric Trump, in an interview with CNBC, declined to address questions about the conflict of interest described in the NYT article.
“My father is the first not to profit from the presidency. We’ve always been serial capitalists; we’ve always had companies. Cryptocurrencies emerged out of necessity because we were deprived of bank accounts, and we needed to find a new way,” he stated.
According to a financial disclosure published in June by the Office of Government Ethics, Donald Trump earned over $57 million from tokens of his DeFi project World Liberty Financial.
