Donald Trump Files Lawsuit Against 20 Media Outlets—Full List

The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) filed a complaint on Monday in Sarasota County, Florida‘s twelfth circuit court.

Donald Trump Files Lawsuit Against 20 Media Outlets—Full List

The former president Donald Trump‘s organization, which owns the social media platform Truth Social, has sued Newsweek and 20 other media outlets, claiming that the reports about its losses defamed the company.

The lawsuit refers to reports that the company had lost $73 million since it was founded as “an utter fabrication.”

The complaint filed on Monday included Newsweek, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Daily News, MSNBC, CNBC, Forbes, Axios, and Reuters.

The owner of The Hill, Rolling Stone magazine, the owner and executive editor of the Miami Herald newspaper and British newspapers such as The Guardian and the Daily Mail are included in the list.

Several online-only publications, such as Mediaite, Salon, Benzinga, Daily Beast, MarketWatch, Gizmodo, and Deadline Hollywood, are mentioned.

The complaint brings out one count of defamation and one count of injurious falsehood. In addition to injunctive relief “prohibiting the publication or republication of the defamatory statements,” it demands $1.5 billion in damages. A jury trial is also demanded.

The company’s attorneys claimed that the reports in different media channels were part of an “unprecedented and seemingly coordinated media campaign,” citing that each of the outlets “reported the same false number within approximately 24 hours of one another, each citing to a public Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filing, in which the mystery $73 million loss appears nowhere.”

The company stated, “This was a coordinated effort to damage TMTG’s reputation, degrade the firm’s financial standing, freeze its access to capital, and torpedo the anticipated merger between Digital World Acquisition Corporation (“DWAC”) and TMTG”

The merger and acquisition company DWAC and TMTG had been arranging a merger since October 2021, but there have been multiple deadline misses in the deal.

Although the deal appears to have the potential for profitability, DWAC raised concerns in the SEC filing over TMTG’s ability to have “sufficient funds to meet its liabilities as they fall due.”

The agreement is envisioned to provide the Truth Social platform with a solid financial foundation to help it compete with an increasing number of social media platforms.

Every company’s financial operations were summarised in a November 13 SEC filing by DWAC. It revealed that Truth Social had net sales of $1.4 million in 2022 but an operating loss of $23 million.

With $2.3 million in net sales, it reported an operating loss of $7.6 million for the first half of 2023.

According to the statement, from the beginning of business on February 8, 2021, to June 30, 2023, TMTG incurred a net loss of $31.5 million.

Truth Social issued a statement when the $73 million figure was initially made public.

It read, “Unsurprisingly, the Fake News is defaming Truth Social, reporting utterly false information, and ignoring that yesterday’s filing was a crucial milestone toward completing our proposed merger.”

A few media sites in the lawsuit have updated their articles to remove the $73 million estimate.