A federal judge threw out Donald Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times on Friday because it was too rambling even to consider.
U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush, said Trump violated a federal procedural rule in a scathing rebuke in which he noted lawsuits require a “short and plain” statement outlining why the plaintiff deserves relief.
He added that a complaint is not “a public forum for vituperation and invective” or “a protected platform to rage against an adversary.”
The judge said Trump’s team could file an amended complaint within the next 28 days if they want the case to keep going. He ordered that it should be no more than 40 pages—after torching the original complaint in an extraordinary display of judicial contempt for a litigant.
“Even under the most generous and lenient application of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible,” the judge wrote of the president’s 85-page complaint.
He later described its contents as “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.”
Merryday went on to school the president’s legal team that a complaint should be a “mechanism to fairly, precisely, directly, soberly, and economically inform the defendants—in a professionally constrained manner consistent with the dignity of the adversarial process in an Article III court of the United States.“
He also stated that their complaint extended well beyond even the most lenient perimeters for one.
The Daily Beast contacted Trump’s lawyers for comment.
Trump filed the lawsuit against The New York Times earlier on September 15.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump accused the newspaper and its reporters of being allowed to “freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long” and complained about its editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
The Times fired back that the lawsuit had “no merit” in a statement.
“It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting,” the paper said.
The publication said intimidation tactics would not deter it and vowed to continue reporting and standing up for journalists’ rights to ask questions under the First Amendment.
Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times was one in a series of attacks by the president on the media, which have raised alarms among First Amendment advocates this week.
On Thursday, the president suggested broadcast networks should have their licenses revoked for criticizing him.
It came as his administration faces mounting questions over comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show being suspended.
On Wednesday, ABC said it was pulling Kimmel off the air indefinitely just hours after Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, publicly threatened to take action against the network following the comedian’s Monday comments on the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
