A judicial ruling has been issued against former U.S. President Donald Trump, mandating him to pay $392,638 to "The New York Times" and its journalists as legal costs after his lawsuit against them was dismissed.
Trump had filed a lawsuit in September 2021 against The New York Times, accusing three of its journalists of orchestrating a "malicious conspiracy" to obtain his tax documents. These journalists published an investigation in 2018 that won them the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
In May 2023, a judge in the commercial division of the New York State Supreme Court dismissed Trump's complaint. In a new decision released last Friday, the same judge deemed the newspaper’s proposed compensation for defense costs as "reasonable" and ordered Donald Trump to pay the full amount.
The newspaper's investigation examined how the Republican billionaire, who claims to be a self-made man, amassed his fortune. The report revealed that Donald Trump, in fact, received over several years approximately $413 million from his father, partly through a sham company, which allowed him to avoid paying taxes.
Trump, who is seeking a return to the White House, faces financial allegations along with his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., of inflating the value of their real estate assets—from skyscrapers and luxury hotels to golf courses—for years to secure bank loans and insurance contracts on better terms.
Furthermore, Trump is being tried in other cases, including retaining highly classified documents at his residence and manipulating the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. However, he denies all charges against him in these cases, considering them attempts to interfere in the upcoming elections and hinder his efforts to return to the presidency.
