Donald Trump files lawsuits against authors of books critical of him
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has used federal prosecutors, presidential directives, and his own personal lawsuits to pursue or punish several authors who’ve published books that were critical of him — i.e. books critical of his magnanimous greatness.
Of course, everyone not drinking the orange Kool-Aid saw this coming from a mile away. From the first day of his 2016 campaign through today, Donald Trump has hated the Constitution because it was created to protect our God-given rights and limit the power of tyrannical government.
So far, twenty documented targets spanning the national security establishment, the president’s own former administration, and his extended family have been identified (via Defiance.News):
The twenty documented targets span the national security establishment, the president’s own former administration, and his extended family. They include two former FBI directors, two former heads of the CIA and national intelligence, a sitting U.S. senator, a former Republican congresswoman who investigated the January 6 attack, and a niece who disclosed his finances, among others. The common thread, according to the review, is that each published an account critical of Trump.
Amidst the flurry of legal actions and threats against anti-Trump authors, the president and his appointees have consistently said his actions are driven by law rather than politics, with senior officials defending the president’s authority to direct the Justice Department to pursue investigations. Yet the pursuit of people who’ve written unflattering portrayals of Trump has gone from a subtle pattern to what now amounts to a systematic campaign of retribution.
One legal scholar, who I spoke to recently, said the pattern has no clean precedent beyond Richard Nixon’s secret “enemies list,” albeit with one distinction. Nixon concealed his roster of targets in an internal memo. Trump’s roster now shows up in indictments, public directives, and posts demanding the prosecution of named individuals. Indeed, never before has a White House developed such an extensive and open “blacklist” of American authors who’ve criticized the commander in chief.
In pursuing these targets, Donald Trump has proven (unintentionally, and at great expense) the oldest cliché in publishing. The pen is mightier than the sword. Yet he appears hellbent on using the latter to exact revenge. (Emphasis mine)
As I wrote during Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, Nixon’s enemies list has nothing on Trump’s — an indisputable fact when you consider Trump’s lawsuits against book authors — so the comparison between the two “crooks” is undeniable.
Donald Trump launched his threat to sue authors who write books critical of him and his performance in the early weeks of his second term, and it came with a suggestion that a “nice new law” could be created to silence the “dishonesty” of authors and media outlets (via livemint.com):
US President Donald Trump has vowed to take legal action against authors and media outlets that use anonymous sources in their reporting about him. The US President on Wednesday took to Truth Social and posted, “They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I’ll do it as a service to our Country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”
Donald Trump’s move comes after the publication of a new tell-all book ‘All Or Nothing’ by journalist Michael Wolff, which has sparked significant controversy and anger within Trump’s camp.
Donald Trump’s statement reflects his long-standing disdain for mainstream media, which he frequently labels as “fake news.” (Emphasis mine)
Trump’s threat also targeted so-called unfavorable media and, unfortunately, he’s had a great deal of financial success in this department. In just the first few weeks of his second term, he filed lawsuits against:
- ABC News for allegedly using defamatory language and received a $15 million settlement.
- CBS’s “60 Minutes” over perceived editing bias in a Kamala Harris interview and received a massive settlement.
- The Des Moines Register for releasing polls before the election that were unfavorable of him — the outcome of this suit is still undecided.
Trump’s war on the media has also reaped him non-monetary rewards. For example, the decision by The Washington Post to withdraw its endorsement of Kamala Harris provided evidence of how he could successfully force a media outlet to do his bidding in order to preserve its business interests.
These early victories pale in comparison when we take an eagle’s view of Trump and his fascism from then to now (via The Hartmann Report):
Over the past year-and-a-half we’ve watched Brendan Carr, Trump’s hitman at the FCC, go to CPAC conferences and brag about how he’s going to assault stations that say things he and Trump dislike. He’s trying to intimidate ABC affiliates into muzzling Jimmy Kimmel — again. And he succeeded in taking down Stephen Colbert.
And a Trump-adjacent billionaire nepo-baby has acquired CBS and is systematically stripping it of its journalistic integrity, starting with the evening news and now gutting the nation’s number one news magazine show, 60 Minutes.
Trump, Ellison, Weiss, the billionaire owners of Sinclair, the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News,” the 1,000+ billionaire-owned radio stations across the country, the billionaire-subsidized podcasters, and billionaire-owned social media sites like Facebook and X that have apparently been algorithmically slanted toward Trump’s neofascist movement are all following an ancient script.
Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and Franco all seized control of the news in their countries in their first year in power. It took both Putin and Orbán two or so years, because they wrote a new script for the takeover: sue the news outlets and reporters into bankruptcy for “defamation” or “slander,” then have friendly oligarchs take over the outlets. (Emphasis mine)
Trump’s hatred of the First Amendment’s protection for people who say critical things about him has been foundational to his presidency ever since he waged his self-declared war against the news media — or as he likes to call it, the “enemy of the American people” — going back to February 2016 during a campaign rally when he promised to open up libel laws so that when the media “writes purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
“If I win . . . I’m going to open our libel laws so when they write purposely negative horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
Media bias is real and expected, but it’s not unconstitutional. What IS unconstitutional is any attempt by Trump and the Republican Party to silence the free speech rights of authors and the media simply because they don’t like what is being said about them.
From the beginning of our Republic, the Founding Fathers considered a free press a bulwark against out-of-control government, and they believed that citizens should be free to use the press to freely criticize the government without interference:
“I am … for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
The First Amendment, even when it is used in a biased manner, is vital for holding government accountable . . . and that includes books written by authors who have the courage to be critical of Trump.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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