Judge Orders Trump to Pay Legal Fees Racked Up by New York Times and Mary Trump After Dismissing His Lawsuit

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower, Monday, April 3, 2023, in New York.  (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Donald Trump has been ordered to pay all attorneys fees, legal expenses, and “associated costs” after a New York judge threw out his court case against The New York Times and his niece, Mary Trump.

The famously litigious Trump filed suit against the paper, three reporters, and his niece in 2021. He alleged they planned an “insidious plot” to collect his financial records for an extensive story on how he avoided paying taxes, according to The Daily Beast. Mary Trump sued that same year to have the case dismissed.

The story took 18 months to research and won the prestigious 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Writing. The prize board said the work debunked Trump’s “claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.”

Court documents claimed that Mary Trump worked with the paper to “smuggle records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over.” She revealed in her book, Too Much and Never Enough, that she was the Times‘ source for the story.

Trump accused the three reporters — David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner —of being “motivated, at least in part, by their actual malice.”

A spokesperson for the paper released a statement, saying, “The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today. It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine news gathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public.”

According to The Daily Beast, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert R. Reed wrote that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” and said the paper’s ability to research is “the very core of protected First Amendment activity.”

Trump has sued the New York Times repeatedly over the years. Neither he nor Mary Trump have commented on this case.