Court To Donald Trump: Journalists Encouraging Someone To Break A Confidentiality Agreement Is Protected Speech
Lame duck president and serial bad faith litigant Donald Trump has yet again been told his arguments are bad and he should feel bad. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Suing sued multiple times over the publication of a book by his niece, Mary Trump, which detailed plenty of stuff the on-his-way-out-the-door president didn’t want published.
After a temporary (but still bullshit) injunction against Mary Trump and her publisher, courts reversed course and began respecting the First Amendment, allowing sales of her book to proceed. In her book were details on Donald Trump and his siblings’ efforts made to bleed their father dry prior to his death, solely for the reason of dodging state inheritance taxes.
(Poorly) represented by anti-free speech legal advocate Charles Harder, Trump was handed a loss in this case. He was also handed another loss in a bogus defamation lawsuit against the New York Times — this one (falsely) claiming an op-ed had maligned him by offering up opinions and actual facts.
This case — recently tossed by a state trial court — is a blend of all of the above. This lawsuit was brought by Donald Trump against Mary Trump, as well as the New York Times, whose journalists talked Mary Trump into breaching her nondisclosure agreement to expose more information about Donald’s unsavory financial habits. (via Volokh Conspiracy, which inexplicably does not link to the decision)
The decision [PDF] from Judge Robert R. Reed makes it clear that journalists persuading people to violate agreements does not make them liable for the violated agreement. What the journalists did is called “journalism.” And it’s very obviously protected by the First Amendment.
The crux of plaintiff’s claim is that a reporter for The Times caused his niece, Mary Trump, to take 20-year-old tax and financial documents held by her lawyer and disclose them in violation of a 2001 settlement agreement. The Times, it is alleged, then used those documents to publish a lengthy article in 2018 that reported that plaintiff had allegedly participated in dubious tax and other financial schemes during the 1990s. In this action, plaintiff does not specifically dispute the truth of any statements made in the article. Rather, plaintiff alleges that The Times defendants’ interaction with Mary Trump resulted in her breach of certain confidentiality provisions of the 2001 settlement agreement, rendering The Times and its journalists liable for tortious interference with contract, aiding and abetting tortious interference with contract, unjust enrichment, and/or negligent supervision. Plaintiff demands $100 million in damages.
Not much of a crux, even if the plaintiff (that being Donald Trump) tried to hang his arguments on it to the tune of a completely made-up damage assessment of $100 million. What Trump and his terrible lawyers insist is contractual interference is actually just a thing called “newsgathering,” which is fully protected by the First Amendment.
Plaintiff does not cite a single case where any court, whether state or federal, has held that a reporter is liable for inducing his or her source to breach a confidentiality provision. In fact, New York courts have consistently rejected efforts to impose tort liability on the press based on allegations that a reporter induced a source to breach a non-disclosure agreement.
And how could he? There is no precedent backing his insane claim that reporters talking someone into revealing information they’re sworn to withhold is the nature of the business. And this reporting had extremely high value to the public, given that it dealt with a sitting president who was altogether unwilling to discuss his past financial dealings, much less adhere to the longstanding presidential tradition of releasing their federal tax returns.
Trump is, of course, welcome to sue Mary Trump for breaching a contractual agreement. What he can’t do is target a news source for reporting on the contents of the breach.
Given the binding precedent of Highland Capital and the New York Constitution’s strong protection of newsgathering, plaintiff’s attempt to impose civil liability on The Times and its reporters lacks “a substantial basis in law” [CPLR 3211(g)] — and is contrary to the core principles that underlie the First Amendment and the New York State Constitution. Accordingly, the tort claims asserted against The Times and its reporters are dismissed in their entirety.
The lawsuit is dismissed, at least in terms of the allegations against the New York Times. Even better, Trump is now on the hook for the Times’ legal costs, thanks to the court’s application of the state’s anti-SLAPP law.
As explained above, New York’s anti-SLAPP law applies to this lawsuit because it “is an action involving public petition and participation” as defined in section 76-a(1)(a) of the New York Civil Rights Law. Therefore, due to dismissal of the claims asserted against The Times and its reporters, The Times defendants are entitled to recover their costs and attorneys’ fees.
The next legal battle will be over the fees Trump owes to the New York Times. Whatever the final amount, the Times shouldn’t hold its breath waiting for the check to arrive. If Trump can’t even be bothered to pay the lawyers who represent him in his constant stream of bullshit lawsuits, it’s unlikely the people he’s sued, intimidated, and otherwise annoyed are anywhere near the top of Donald Trump’s accounts payable list.