Former President Trump seeks over $450 million in defamation lawsuit against CNN
According to a lawsuit that was filed on Monday, former President Donald Trump is suing CNN for defamation and is seeking compensatory damages that are more than $75,000 as well as punitive damages that are in the amount of $475 million.
He says that CNN is hurting his reputation by giving “false, slanderous, and inflammatory mischaracterizations” of him. He also says that CNN’s actions are “meant to stop [his] political career.”
Trump says that CNN’s use of the term “Big Lie” to describe Trump’s “stated concerns about the integrity of the election process for the 2020 presidential election” gives him the right to punitive damages in the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars.
” Trump’s lawyers say that the “Big Lie” “is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”
“‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,'” Trump’s lawyers stated, noting it was used by Hitler to generate hatred against Jews and to justify their genocide.
According to the lawsuit, “CNN’s campaign of dissuasion against [Trump] in the form of libel and slander has only grown in recent months as CNN thinks [he] may run for president in 2024.”
In November 2020, the former president has been alleging that the election was rigged, in spite of the fact that hundreds of lawsuits and recounts have shown that this is not the case. Even though he is the subject of an investigation by Congress and the government for allegedly attempting to change the results of the election, he continues to assert that he won the election in 2020.
CNN did not comment on the lawsuit.
In the Southern District of Florida, the matter has been sent to Judge Raaj Singhal, who was appointed to his position by President Trump.