US President Donald Trump on Monday (local time) said he was filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times (NYT).
This comes days after the legacy newspaper published articles detailing Trump's ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Calling it "one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country", Trump alleged in a Truth Social post that the NYT had become a "virtual 'mouthpiece' for the Radical Left Democrat Party".
The Florida lawsuit amount exceeds NYT's market capitalisation, which currently stands at about $9.65 billion.
The lawsuit filed at the US District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two NYT journalists and published ahead of the 2024 elections, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump", an Associated Press report said.
Last week, US lawmakers released a 2003 letter that they alleged had been written by Trump for Epstein's 50th birthday. The sexually suggestive letter featured a drawing of a woman's body, as part of a 238-page "birthday book", in which he calls Epstein "my best pal".
The book was part of a collection of documents released by a US House committee, including the late paedophile financier's will as well as his personal address book (which also contained the names of royalty, celebrities, models and politicians from around the world).
Despite marked similarities in the letter signature and that used in Trump's personal notes, the White House denied the letter's authenticity, saying that the president "did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it".
Pointing to a 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris—who was then a candidate in the US presidential elections—he said that the newspaper had "engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole".
This is not the first such lawsuit he has filed in connection with the Epstein allegations.
In July, Trump had filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch after the newspaper published a story laying bare his ties to Epstein.
The New York Times has not yet published any response to Trump's online tirade and the lawsuit against it.
