Trump And His Lawyers Get Spanked In Court
All the courts at once.
Donald Trump had a rough week in three courts — although he was apparently too ignorant to fully understand it.
First, Judge Thomas Barber, a Trump appointee in Tampa, tossed a defamation suit against the Washington Post over a 2023 article entitled “Trust linked to porn-friendly bank could gain a stake in Trump's Truth Social” by Drew Harwell, Matt Bernardini and Matei Rosca. It involved a claim that Trump Media and Technology Company (TMTG), the parent company of of Truth Social, failed to disclose a $240,000 finder's fee paid to arrange an $8 million loan. TMTG sued for defamation, hiring “Kraken” alum Jesse Binnall, who makes his living filing bumptious defamation suits for MAGA dorks like Mike Flynn and former North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark “minisoldr” Robinson. (Both sued CNN. Both lost.)
The first two versions of TMTG’s complaint got dismissed, but then the plaintiff suddenly remembered in January that no such finders fee had been paid. That new “fact” was enough for Judge Barber to allow discovery, which unearthed both an invoice for the “referral fee” plus an unsigned referral fee agreement. This appears to have resolved the matter for the court, which dismissed the case in a minute order, holding that the “Plaintiff has failed to present evidence that would allow a jury to find by clear and convincing evidence that Defendant published the allegedly defamatory statements with actual malice.” The judge did not elaborate on his reasoning, but promised that “a written order memorializing and explaining these rulings will follow in due course.”
Binnall can’t take all the credit here, though, since he passed the baton in March to Alejandro Brito, Trump’s current trollsuit lawyer. That means that Brito is the one who’ll have to fend off the Post’s motion for monetary sanctions associated with his client’s failure to produce discovery. And Brito is already pretty busy!
Down the hall in Tampa, he just won a round in Trump’s lawsuit against the New York Times … sort of. In that case, the president defeated a motion to dismiss for lack of venue and/or transfer the case to the Southern District of New York. Judge Steven Merryday held that Trump transacts enough business in the Middle District of Florida that he’s entitled to file suit there. (His residence at Mar-a-Lago is in the Southern District of Florida, FWIW.)
Trump immediately took to Truth Social to praise this “very fair and highly respected Judge.”
This is probably not an opinion shared by his trusty sidekick, since Judge Merryday dropkicked Brito’s first complaint for being wholly defective in every way. Here is just one of the 85 pages Brito vomited onto the docket back in September.
