Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
October 13, 2016 11:37 am PDT

New York Times responds to Donald Trump's lawsuit threat: bring it on

trump-grope-1

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump boasted of groping women. This opened the gates, and women came forward with claims of Trump groping them. The New York Times reported their allegations. Trump threatened to sue the Times. Times lawyer David E. McCraw responds:

Dear Mr. Kasowitz:

I write in response to your letter of October 12, 2016 to Dean Baquet concerning your client Donald Trump, the Republican 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 ones reputation. Mr. Trump has bragged about this non-consensual sexual touching of women. He has bragged about intruding on beauty pageant contestants in their dressing rooms. He acquiesced to a radio hosts request to discuss Mr. Trumps own daughter as a piece of ass. Multiple women not mentioned in our article have publicly come forward to report on Mr. Trumps unwanted advances. Nothing in our article has had the slights 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, as an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday nights presidential debate. Our reporters diligently worked to confirm the womens accounts. They provided readers with Mr. Trumps response, including his forceful denial of the womens 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


Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/iVDo5Ypq7zU/new-york-times-responds-to-don.html

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article