The campaign of President Donald Trump has announced a libel lawsuit against the New York Times for the paper’s bias and mishandling of reporting on the “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory, Fox News reports.
The lawsuit is specifically directed at an op-ed from March 27, 2019, titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo,” which the lawsuit alleges was meant to “improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020.” The lawsuit also seeks “compensatory damages in the millions of dollars” for its promotion of the conspiracy theory before it was debunked by the release of the Mueller Report.
At Wednesday’s press conference addressing the government response to the coronavirus, President Trump referred to the lawsuit saying that the New York Times “did a bad thing,” and that “there will be more coming.” The Times released its own statement in response, falsely claiming that the campaign’s lawsuit seeks to “punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find acceptable.”