WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday called for tougher libel laws, saying the current iteration is a ‘‘sham and a disgrace’’ as he addressed his Cabinet and reporters at the White House.
‘‘Can’t say things that are false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account,’’ Trump said at his Cabinet meeting. ‘‘We are going to take a very, very strong look at that.’’
Conservatives and liberals have largely agreed that there should be a high bar for libel claims from public officials, requiring the officials to show actual malice — or that the news organization knew the claims were false before publishing them.
Trump’s complaints about libel are not new; he has somewhat regularly called for tougher libel laws as he has smarted over news coverage, decried ‘‘fake’’ news and pointed out corrections from news outlets. Those calls have drawn sharp denunciations from legal scholars and news organizations.
The president has been particularly aggrieved after the publication of Michael Wolff’s ‘‘Fire and Fury,’’ which depicts his White House as chaotic, beset by infighting and incompetent, at least in the early days of his administration. The president has also uttered a number of falsehoods about others, such as saying then-President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. According to The Washington Post, Trump has made about 2,000 false or misleading statements since taking office.
It is unlikely that Congress would take up a move to change libel laws.
The meeting was unlike past Cabinet meetings, which have been marked by officials praising the president. Trump recited a number of accomplishments from his administration, including the tax bill that passed last year, the rising economy, and the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
The president said his position on the border wall will ‘‘never change,’’ but on DACA, we ‘‘want to see something.’’ Democrats are resistant to making a deal on immigration that includes money for a wall along the southern border.
Legislators have until early March to find a compromise for the immigration program that allows undocumented children to stay in the United States, and Trump has said the bill needs to have ‘‘love.’’ He has not said exactly what he wants in return for keeping the program.
washington post
Trump’s personal lawyer sues BuzzFeed over dossier
President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen sued BuzzFeed Inc. and Fusion GPS for defamation over allegations about him in the research firm’s dossier that was commissioned in 2016 by the president’s political opponents and published by the news organization.
Cohen’s suit against Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier, and its co-founder Glenn Simpson was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York Tuesday. BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety nearly a year ago, which it said it obtained from a source it didn’t identify. The lawsuit against the company was filed in state court in New York Tuesday.
The dossier contains unverified claims that Cohen and Trump had suspicious connections with Russian figures. Most other US news organizations declined to publish the document because many of its claims — some of them salacious — haven’t been substantiated.
“It will be proven that I had no involvement in this Russian collusion conspiracy,’’ Cohen said in an interview on Tuesday. “My name was included only because of my proximity to the president.’’
BuzzFeed spokesman Matt Mittenthal said in a statement, “We look forward to defending the free press and our First Amendment rights in court.’’
Fusion’s lawyer, Joshua Levy, said Wednesday: “We have no comment.’’
Fusion GPS hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the dossier. Fusion was first commissioned to investigate Trump in 2016 by the Washington Free Beacon newspaper, which has said that none of the information it received from the firm was included in the dossier. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee later commissioned Fusion and the work that led to the dossier, according to the Washington Post.
The document has become a focus of Republican-led investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Steele is reported to have provided the dossier to the FBI in 2016, and some Republicans allege that the document prompted the agency to open a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
bloomberg news
