The 85-page complaint names the New York Times Company, publishing company Penguin Random House LLC, and New York Times writers Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, and Michael Schmidt as individual defendants. 

The lawsuit names several articles by the four reporters and one book published by Penguin Random House and written by Craig and Buettner, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Trump’s lawyers say the pieces “are part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”

“The subject matter of this action—a malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book written by two of its reporters and three false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging articles, all carefully crafted by Defendants, with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump, and all published during the height of a Presidential Election that became the most consequential in American history—represent a new journalistic low for the hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady,’” Trump’s lawyers write in the complaint.

Trump is bringing two counts of defamation against all defendants, meaning he believes they made false statements to injure his reputation. His lawyers clarified in the complaint that the defendants wrote the articles and book with “actual malice,” meaning they “published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity.”

Trump claims the named book in the case, Lucky Loser, is “false, malicious, and defamatory,” listing several statements in the text he deems Craig and Buettner knew were false when written, including statements about Trump’s disposition on his show The Apprentice versus in real life and about receiving money from his father through fraudulent schemes.

The first article Trump references in the complaint as “defamatory, malicious, and false” is an article by Craig and Buettner written in the lead up to the book publication, titled “The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump’”. The second is a piece written by Baker called “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment”. The third is a piece written by Schmidt called “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator”.

TRUMP TO TARGET ‘RADICAL-LEFT’ GROUPS FUNDING VIOLENCE THAT LED TO CHARLIE KIRK’S DEATH

Trump announced the lawsuit first on Truth Social.

“Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party,” Trump posted. “I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF!” 

The president’s lawsuit comes after he threatened to sue the newspaper last week for publishing articles about a note and drawing, supposedly by Trump, that was given to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has denied that the note was from him. He has also sued the Wall Street Journal over reporting related to the note and drawing.

“The ‘Times’ has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole,” Trump said in his post. “I am PROUD to hold this once respected ‘rag’ responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely ‘smearing’ me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts.”

As mentioned in the social media post, it is not the first time Trump has sued a news company. Previously, Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos for comments he made in an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), claiming that Trump had been found liable for rape. Trump reached a settlement deal in December 2024 with the network and anchor in which they agreed to pay the president $15 million in exchange for dropping his lawsuit. 

MSNBC ANALYST MATTHEW DOWD FIRED AFTER ‘INSENSITIVE’ CHARLIE KIRK SHOOTING REMARKS

In July 2025, Trump and Paramount Global reached a $16 million settlement over a lawsuit the president filed against CBS News for the network allegedly editing an interview between then-Democratic candidate for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, and 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker. The interview occurred just weeks before the 2024 presidential election, and Trump called it “the biggest scandal in broadcast history.” He claimed CBS News “took her answer out and gave her a different answer after it was shot.”

The network denied the claims but admitted it was edited due to time constraints.