It was nearly four years ago when The New York Times published one of the most devastating reports I’ve ever seen. In the first real breakthrough on understanding Donald Trump’s controversial finances, the newspaper exposed evidence of “outright fraud” and “dubious tax schemes” that the Republican exploited to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from his father.
The findings painted a picture in which the then-president, far from the self-made man he pretends to be, relied heavily on legally dubious family handouts. As regular readers may recall, it was the first of three brutal reports on Trump’s financial history, leaving little doubt that he had spent much of his adult life meandering between failures and fraudulent endeavors.
Eventually, he responded to the reporting by filing a $100 million lawsuit against the newspaper and its source — his niece, Mary Trump — who helped expose him as a fraud. She responded to the litigation at the time by saying, “I think he is a f——- loser.”
Her pointed choice of words came to mind yesterday as the former president’s case was thrown out of court. NBC News reported:
A New York judge dismissed Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit against The New York Times on Wednesday. … In his ruling, Justice Robert R. Reed of the state Supreme Court in New York County said Trump’s claims against the Times and three of its journalists for their Pulitzer-winning series on his undisclosed finances in 2018 “fail as a matter of constitutional law.” (Supreme Court is the name of New York’s top trial court.)
As part of the Republican’s defeat, the former president was also ordered to pay the attorneys fees and legal expenses for the Times and its journalists.
His case against Mary Trump is still pending, though she and her lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss.
If recent history is any guide, her odds of success are pretty good.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, Trump has made all kinds of threats over the…
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