Donald Trump has found a new way to sue media: copyright.
He filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday, claiming that Bob Woodward and his publisher Simon & Schuster needed his permission before releasing the audiobook. The Trump Tapes, last year. The audiobook is a collection of 20 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump.
“The said audio was proprietary material subject to various use and distribution restrictions – related to copyright, license, contract, fundamental principles of the publishing industry and core values of fairness and consent,” the lawsuit states. (Read it here). Among other things, Woodward interviewed Trump for his 2020 book Rage. The book went off like a bomb when Trump admitted that he wanted to downplay the Covid threat in the first weeks of the pandemic.
The lawsuit names Woodward, Simon & Schuster and Paramount Global, the publisher’s parent company, as defendants.
Trump claims that the defendants’ “continued concerted efforts to profit from the Proprietary Audio Recordings and the works they distribute derived from the Proprietary Audio Recordings have resulted in substantial harm to President Trump, necessitating the bringing of this lawsuit.”
Trump is seeking at least $49.98 million in damages. He also wants a judge to declare that he has the audio recordings of the interview, some of which were recorded in the Oval Office.
Woodward and Simon & Schuster issued a joint statement calling the lawsuit “baseless” and vowing to “aggressively defend against it.”
“All of these interviews were on the record and recorded with the knowledge and consent of President Trump,” they said. “Additionally, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump’s own words. We believe that the facts and the law are in our favor.”
Trump is no stranger to suing media workers, often quickly dismissing lawsuits. A defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, filed by the Trump campaign in 2020, was dismissed on the grounds that what was written was an unenforceable opinion. Another lawsuit brought by the campaign against CNN was also dismissed. Trump recently filed another lawsuit against CNN, this time for using the term “The Big Lie” to refer to Trump’s baseless and false claims about the 2020 presidential election. The lawsuit should be dismissed because the use of the term “The Big Lie” is not provably false or enforceable.
Earlier this month, Trump and his lawyer were ordered to pay nearly $1 million in fines by a federal judge who said they had engaged in a “persistent pattern of abuse” by the courts. The judge, Donald Middlebrooks, dismissed a lawsuit Trump brought against Hillary Clinton and 30 others, but he also cited the CNN case and the lawsuit against the Pulitzer Board and Twitter as examples of prosecutors’ ” widespread and persistent behavior”.
Author: Ted Johnson
Source: Deadline
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
