On Monday, former US President Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN, asking for 475 million dollars in compensatory damages. Trump said in his lawsuit that CNN was waging a “libel and slander” campaign against him out of “fear” that he would run for the office of President again in 2024.
The complaint cites multiple instances in which CNN seemed to equate Trump to Hitler, including a special program by Fareed Zakaria in January 2022 that featured a video of the German tyrant.
Donald Trump files defamation suit against CNN
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“As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the left, CNN has tried to taint the Plaintiff with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler,'” the lawsuit mentions. “CNN has sought to use its massive influence, purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source — to defame the plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically,” it further adds.
Former president Donald Trump is currently the subject of a criminal investigation by the US Justice Department for keeping government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office in January 2021.
Trump communicated in a statement on Monday that similar cases might be launched against other media organizations. “In the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a large number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and wrongdoing, including as it pertains to ‘The Big Lie,’ that they used so often in reference to their disinformation attack on Presidential Election of 2020,” Trump said. He also stated that he may take ‘appropriate action’ against the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.
According to sources, at a meeting more than three months ago, new CNN CEO Chris Licht discreetly encouraged his news staff to desist from using such remarks against Trump because it is too similar to Democratic efforts to brand the former president.
