Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book looks at the return of Donald Trump.
He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, David Enrich and Alan Feuer at The New York Times.
President-elect Donald J. Trump sued The Des Moines Register for running a poll before the election that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, escalating his threats to seek retribution against the mainstream media and his political enemies.
Mr. Trump has long said that people he claims have wronged him should be prosecuted, including President Biden and his family; Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents; and Liz Cheney, the former representative from Wyoming who helped lead the House investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power in 2020.
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Just this week, Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress moved to support his efforts to seek retribution against Ms. Cheney, a chair of the House committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and recommended criminal charges against Mr. Trump.
On Tuesday, a House oversight subcommittee issued a report recommending that Ms. Cheney herself face criminal investigation for some of the work she did while investigating Mr. Trump. The report accused Ms. Cheney of secretly communicating with one of the committee’s star witnesses, Cassidy Hutchinson, without Ms. Hutchinson’s lawyer knowing.
Ms. Hutchinson gave significant but disputed testimony at one of the committee’s public hearings, describing, among other things, how Mr. Trump was warned that his supporters were carrying weapons on Jan. 6 but expressed no concern because they were not a threat to him.
By recommending that Ms. Cheney be investigated — including for possibly violating the same federal obstruction count that the congresswoman recommended against Mr. Trump — the House Republicans appeared to be laying the groundwork for a potential criminal prosecution. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that Ms. Cheney and other members of the Jan. 6 committee should face charges and jail time.
In Mr. Trump’s own telling, winning his civil legal actions isn’t always the point.
Mr. Trump, who has often attacked journalists publicly for details in news accounts that he hasn’t liked, famously lost a libel case that he brought against the writer Timothy O’Brien over Mr. O’Brien’s description of Mr. Trump’s net worth as much less than he claimed it to be.
The case played out over the span of years. But during the 2016 election, Mr. Trump told The Washington Post that it was worth it, even with the loss.
“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more,” he said of Mr. O’Brien and his book publisher. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
Lloyd Green at The Guardian:At 3 o'clock in the morning, Trump called for Liz Cheney to "be investigated by the FBI." pic.twitter.com/wcGMtpz2Ba
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) December 18, 2024
Then there is ABC News. The network recently agreed to pay $15m to settle a Trump defamation suit. Last spring George Stephanopoulos, its Sunday talkshow host, repeatedly said Trump was liable for rape when a jury had actually found him liable for abuse.
But there is more to it than that. In August 2023, Trump lost his counter-claim for defamation against Carroll. Dismissing the Trump counter-claim, a judge in New York, Lewis A Kaplan, said that when Carroll repeated her allegation that Trump raped her, her words were “substantially true”. Kaplan also set out in detail why it may be said that Trump raped Carroll.
In May, Stephanopoulos said he would not be “cowed out of doing my job”. This weekend, however, he and ABC expressed collective “regret” over his choice of words. However you look at it, the network caved. With ABC having folded under pressure, expect the president-elect to be emboldened.
Trump has also filed a $10bn action against CBS for purportedly doctoring its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Pending in a federal court in Texas, that lawsuit too is predicated upon alleged violation of a state consumer fraud law. Earlier this month, CBS moved to dismiss the case.
For Trump and his allies, however, overturning New York Times v Sullivan, the US supreme court’s unanimous 1964 landmark ruling on press freedoms, is the ultimate prize. In their view, public figures facing off against the press should be aided by a lower burden of proof. They should no longer be required to demonstrate “actual malice”. The fact that more than half a century has passed since the decision means little.
Justice Clarence Thomas has branded Sullivan and its progeny as “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law”. Justice Neil Gorsuch more subtly contends that the emergence of cable television, the internet, and the 24/7 news cycle warrant re-examination of the “actual malice” standard.
