Donald Trump.Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images
“I have notified CNN of my intent to file a lawsuit over their repeated defamatory statements against me,” Trumpsaid in a statement Wednesday. “I will also be commencing actions against other media outlets who have defamed me and defrauded the public regarding the overwhelming evidence of fraud throughout the 2020 Election. I will never stop fighting for the truth and for the future of our Country!”
The statement comes after Trump’s lawyers wrote in a letter to CNN executives, dated July 21, calling for the network to “publish a full and fair correction, apology, or retraction” for “numerous articles and televised transmissions.”
The CNN content cited in the282-page letteris primarily related to his claims about the 2020 presidential election, which Trump says was stolen, despiteevidence to the contrary.
“For the months and years that have followed the 2020 election, CNN took it upon itself to engage in a campaign of dissuasion — branding President Trump a liar, and one who subscribes to the notion of the ‘Big Lie,'” the letter states. “Reportedly, the term ‘Big Lie’ has been uttered in the context of President Trump’s belief, more than 7,700 times on CNN since January of 2021.”
The letter alleges CNN made “false and defamatory” in describing the terms as such.
CNN declined to comment on Trump’s threat to bring a lawsuit.
But there are reported instances of Trumpadmitting he lostthe 2020 election toJoe Biden.
Former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin revealed during an appearance on CNN in June thatTrump privatelyconfessed he lost.
Donald Trump.Brandon Bell/Getty
What’s more, Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, told the former president that claims of a stolen election were “bulls—,” according to testimony Barr gave to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
In an interview with NBC News, Barr said in March that he told the president in a December 2021 meeting that there was no truth to the theories that the election was rigged or stolen and that “it was wrong to be shoveling it out the way his team was.”
The former attorney general said the president “was asking about different theories” to support the claims that he should remain in office.
“I had the answers,” Barr said in the March interview. “I was able to tell him, ‘This was wrong because of this.'”
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Trump’s daughter and former senior advisor in the White House,Ivanka Trump, also testified before the committee andsaid under oaththat she “accepted” Barr’s assessment.
“It affected my perspective,” she said of Barr’s statements. “I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he said,” she testified.
Other Justice Department officials also appeared as witnesses in the House’s Jan. 6 investigation and said under oath that there wasno credibility to Trump’s claims of a stolen election.
source: people.com
