SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Lawyers for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have called upon the New York Times to retract a bombshell report in which two women claimed that Trump had touched them inappropriately.
The Times story featured two women, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks, who said that Trump made inappropriate physical advances on them despite the fact that they had never met before.
“Your article is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se,” Marc E. Kasowitz, a lawyer representing Trump, wrote in an open letter to Times executive editor Dean Baquet. “We hereby demand that you immediately cease any further publication of this article, remove it from your website and issue a full and immediate retraction and apology. Failure to do so will leave my client with no option but to purse all available actions and remedies.”
The letter lacks any substantive facts to cast doubt on the Times story, and is not a lawsuit.
Republican and Trump campaign sources have revealed to Diya TV that the campaign were “drafting” lawsuits against both the Times and The Palm Beach Post, which published a separate story in which another women claimed Trump had groped her.
Megan Twohey, a reporter for the Times, interviewed the billionaire real estate mogul Tuesday night. “He threatened to sue us if we published these allegations,” Twohey said. She quoted Trump as saying that “none of this ever took place” and calling her “a disgusting human being.” Twohey also received a legal letter from a Trump attorney.
“I think it is pretty evident this story falls clearly in the realm of public service journalism, and discussing issues that arose from the tape and his comments since it surfaced,” Times executive editor Dean Baquet said in response to the action.
A lawyer for Trump similarly threatened to sue The Times when it published several pages of his 1995 tax return earlier this month.
If the Trump campaign does proceed with lawsuits, it will give both the Times and the Post the opportunity to pursue discovery and request information on Trump’s entire sexual history, because Trump would have the burden of proving falsity and actual malice.
