On Monday, Donald Trump filed an 85-page complaint against the New York Times and other defendants for supposed defamation. The complaint seeks $15 billion in damages. Believe it or not, Trump’s core allegation in the complaint is that the defendants “maliciously peddled the fact-free narrative that Burnett somehow ‘discovered’ President Trump for ‘The Apprentice’ and magically transformed him into a celebrity—even though at and prior to the time of publication Defendants knew that President Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business.”
Trump’s complaint is ridiculous, and it puts me in the unprecedented position of cheering for the New York Times.
Today Trump suffered an early (but not decisive) defeat, as the conservative federal district judge handling the case, Stephen Merryday of the Middle District of Florida, on his own initiative soundly ruled that the complaint was in flagrant violation of the elementary rule that it contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” To be sure, judges routinely give lawyers lots of leeway on this rule, but Merryday found Trump’s complaint “decidedly improper and impermissible”:
The pleader initially alleges an electoral victory by President Trump “in historic fashion” — by “trouncing” the opponent — and alludes to “persistent election interference from the legacy media, led most notoriously by the New York Times.” The pleader alludes to “the halcyon days” of the newspaper but complains that the newspaper has become a “fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat party,” which allegedly resulted in the “deranged endorsement” of President Trump’s principal opponent in the most recent presidential election. The reader of the complaint must labor through allegations, such as “a new journalistic low for the hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady.’” The reader must endure an allegation of “the desperate need to defame with a partisan spear rather than report with an authentic looking glass” and an allegation that “the false narrative about ‘The Apprentice’ was just the tip of Defendants’ melting iceberg of falsehoods.” Similarly, in one of many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations, the pleader states, “‘The Apprentice’ represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the [Z]eitgeist of our time.”
The complaint continues with allegations in defense of President Trump’s father and the acquisition of the Trumps’ wealth; with a protracted list of the many properties owned, developed, or managed by The Trump Organization and a list of President Trump’s many books; with a long account of the history of “The Apprentice”; with an extensive list of President Trump’s “media appearances”; with a detailed account of other legal actions both by and against President Trump, including an account of the “Russia Collusion Hoax” and incidents of alleged “lawfare” against President Trump; and with much more, persistently alleged in abundant, florid, and enervating detail….
[A] complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief. As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary. A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.
Judge Merryday has given Trump 28 days to file an amended complaint not longer than 40 pages.