Trump campaign sues Washington Post for defamation

President Trumps' re-election campaign sued the Washington Post on Tuesday for defamation, citing two opinion pieces from last year that linked Mr. Trump to Russian electoral meddling. The action came a week after Mr. Trumps' campaign filed a similar lawsuit against the New York Times.

Mr. Trumps' attacks on news outlets have been a defining mark of his presidency, and The Post has been one of his frequent targets. In 2017, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles by David Farenthold that examined the philanthropic demands of Mr. Trumps. The president has often depreciated The Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, who bought it in 2013.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, is based on two opinion pieces from a Post blog The Plum Line that accused the 2016 Trump election campaign of Having invited assistance from foreign governments. The publications opinion section operates separately from its newsroom.

In a post, published On June 13, Greg Sargent wrote that Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, had concluded that Trump and / or his campaign had strongly encouraged, attempted to plot, and were happily profiting from Russia's efforts.

In an article on June 20, Paul Waldman wrote: Who knows what kind of help Russia and North Korea will bring to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their help? The word invited in the article was linked to a hyperlink transcription from an ABC News interview with Mr. Trump, in which he said he would consider accepting information from a foreign government about a political opponent.

The Trump campaign has accused The Post of making false and defamatory statements.

There has never been a statement from anyone associated with the campaign or the administration inviting Russia or North Korea to help the campaign in 2019 or beyond, said the criminal record. It has also never been reported that the campaign has never had contact with North Korea regarding elections in the United States.

Post spokeswoman Kristine Coratti Kelly said on Tuesday that it was disappointing to see the presidents' campaign committee use these types of tactics, and we will vigorously defend this case.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer for Gibson Dunn who has previously worked on large media cases, said the lawsuit went against basic First Amendment doctrine.

The complaint attacks opinions where the authors express their opinions on the basis of widely reported facts, he said. It is part of the global war on the press.

Trumps' re-election campaign continued with The Times on February 26, claiming that an essay published in the Opinion section of the newspapers last March falsely claimed a counterpart between Russian officials and Mr. Trumps' campaign in 2016. (Like The Post, the Timess Opinion section is separate from his newsroom.)