Former President Donald Trump speaks on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. The rally is being held to support Harriet Hageman, Rep. Liz Cheneys primary challenger in Wyoming.
Chet Strange | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump sued famed journalist Bob Woodward on Monday over the release of audio recordings of his interviews with Trump, who claims he never agreed to allow those tapes to be sold to the public.
Woodward, publisher Simon & Schuster and its parent company, Paramount Global, “unlawfully usurped” Trump’s copyright interests and other rights by publishing an audiobook featuring hours of “raw” audio from Woodward’s many interviews with the former president, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit seeks $50 million or more which it says is based on an estimate that the audiobook, “The Trump Tapes,” sold more than two million copies at $24.99 apiece.
The 31-page complaint, filed in federal court in Pensacola, Florida, alleges that Trump “repeatedly stated to Woodward, in the presence of others, that he was agreeing to be recorded for the sole purpose of Woodward being able to write a single book.”
That book, 2021’s “Rage,” failed to replicate the success of Woodward’s previous book on the Trump White House, according to the lawsuit. Woodward then “decided to exploit, usurp, and capitalize upon President Trump’s voice by releasing the Interview Sound Recordings of their interviews with President Trump in the form of an audiobook,” the complaint alleges.
Simon & Schuster did not immediately comment on the lawsuit.
Woodward interviewed Trump over the phone and in person 19 times between December 2019 and August 2020, according to the lawsuit. Woodward and his publisher assembled more than eight hours of audio from those interviews, plus another from 2016, for the audiobook, which was released last October “without President Trump’s permission,” the lawsuit says.
Trump “made Woodward aware on multiple occasions, both on and off the record, of the nature of the limited…
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