Donald J. Trump threatened to sue The New York Times for libel on Wednesday night in response to an article that featured two women accusing him of touching theminappropriately years ago, but the newspaper defended its reporting and told Mr. Trump’s lawyer that “we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”
The threat of legal action comes as the Trump campaign has been ensnared in controversy after the release of a video last week that showed the Republican nominee for president demeaning women and bragging about being able to force himself on women without consequence. During a presidential debate on Sunday night, Mr. Trump said that it was just “locker-room talk” and that he never did those things.
Mr. Trump told The Times that the allegations of the two women were false and his lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, demanded that the newspaper retract the story and issue an apology.
“Your article is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se,” Mr. Kasowitz wrote. “It is apparent from, among other things, the timing of the article, that it is nothing more than a politically motivated effort to defeat Mr. Trump’s candidacy.”
Mr. Trump has taken an aggressive approach before with a news media that he says is biased against him and he has suggested on the campaign trail that libel laws should be changed so that it is easier to crack down on the news media. Recently, Mr. Trump has suggested that he might take legal action after The Times published and wrote about part of his 1995 tax return.
The Times stood by the article on Thursday. ”We stand by the story, which falls clearly into the realm of public service journalism,” Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, said in a statement.
David McCraw, vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times, followed up in a letter to Mr. Kasowitz and said that the article would not be retracted.
“The women quoted in our story spoke out on an issue of national importance - indeed, an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday night’s presidential debate,” Mr. McCraw wrote. “It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices.”
Mr. McCraw also made the case that the crux of a libel claim is that a person’s reputation has been damaged. However, Mr. Trump has repeatedly boasted in public about his “non-consensual sexual touching of women,” Mr. McCraw said.
Document: The New York Times’s Lawyer Responds to Donald Trump
A lawsuit by Mr. Trump against The Times could prove more difficult since he is a public figure running for president and it could force him to release information about his sexual behavior.
After The Times published its article, several other news organizations published stories that included different accounts from women who said that Mr. Trump touched them inappropriately or behaved rudely. In the video that emerged last week, Mr. Trump boasted in 2005 that he could kiss and grope women as he pleased because he was a celebrity.
In his letter, which was addressed to The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, Mr. Kasowitz said that The Times’s article was not properly investigated and that it included false and malicious allegations. A failure to retract the story, he wrote, “will leave my client with no option but to pursue all available actions and remedies.”
Mr. McCraw responded that The Times did what the law allows in publishing the story and that if Mr. Trump thinks that people who criticize them should be silenced, he would be happy to take the matter to court.
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The text of Mr. McCraw’s letter is below:
Marc E. Kasowitz, Esq.
Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP
1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019-6799
Re: Demand for Retraction
Dear Mr. Kasowitz:
I write in response to your letter of October 12, 2016 to Dean Baquet concerning your client Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States.
You write concerning our article “Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately” and label the article as “libel per se.” You ask that we “remove it from [our] website, and issue a full and immediate retraction and apology.” We decline to do so.
The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation. Mr. Trump has bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women. He has bragged about intruding on beauty pageant contestants in their dressing rooms. He acquiesced to a radio host’s request to discuss Mr. Trump’s own daughter as a “piece of ass.” Multiple women not mentioned in our article have publicly come forward to report on Mr. Trump’s unwanted advances. Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.
But there is a larger and much more important point here. The women quoted in our story spoke out on an issue of national importance — indeed, an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday night’s presidential debate. Our reporters diligently worked to confirm the women’s accounts. They provided readers with Mr. Trump’s response, including his forceful denial of the women’s reports. It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices. We did what the law allows: We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern. If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.
Sincerely,
David E. McCraw
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