Edited by: TJVNews.com
Former President Donald Trump sued CNN for defamation on Monday, seeking $475 million in punitive damages and claiming that the network had carried out a “campaign of libel and slander” against him, as was reported by Reuters.
Trump’s legal team filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the 29 page lawsuit, Trump said that CNN had used its considerable influence as a leading news organization to defeat him politically, the Reuters report indicated.
CNN declined to comment on the case.
The Trump suit also says that CNN always presented him in a highly critical and egregiously unbalanced fashion, however, the nation’s 45th president accused the Atlanta based network of significantly escalating their attacks on him in recent months because they were threatened by the notion of him running again for the presidency in 2024.
“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 claims, as was reported by Reuters.
In his lawsuit, Trump also claims that CNN had intended to besmirch his character in premeditated attacks on him such as a comparison they presented of him and the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. The suit pointed to a January 2022 special report by CNN host Fareed Zakaria that included footage of old, black and white footage of Hitler.
Thus far, Trump has not indicated that would throw his hat in the ring again for the 2024 presidential race but he has been holding frequent rallies across America in which he bolsters those Republican candidates who are running in November’s midterm elections.
Reuters also reported that the 76 year old former president is experiencing his share of legal woes as a criminal investigation has been launched against him by the Justice Department for retaining government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office in January 2021.
Last month, Trump was sued by New York State Attorney General Leticia James, who has accused him of lying to banks and insurers over the value of his assets, Reuters reported.
Moreover, a congressional committee is still investigating Trump’s role, if any, in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol building in Washington, DC
