Trump threatens CNN and New York Times with lawsuits over Iran reports
President Trump has ratcheted up his rhetorical battle over recent US airstrikes in Iran by having an attorney send legal letters to CNN and The New York Times demanding retractions of accurate reports.
On Thursday evening a CNN spokesperson confirmed that the network responded to the letter by rejecting the claims in it.
The Times publicized its response, which said in part, 'No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.'
Trump has a long history of litigation in his business career, and an even longer history of threatening to sue and not following through.
In the past year, Trump has stepped up a legal campaign against major media outlets including CBS, leading some First Amendment experts to decry his use of legal threats and lawsuits to tie up and intimidate newsrooms.
This week's legal letter from Alejandro Brito, one of Trump's personal attorneys, alleged that June 24 stories by CNN and The Times were false and defamatory.
The stories described an early US intelligence assessment of the strikes that was at odds with Trump's insistence that Iran's nuclear enrichment sites were 'completely and totally obliterated.'
Administration officials confirmed the existence of the intel but claimed the assessment was of low confidence and asserted that it was leaked to undercut the president.
Several officials have vowed to conduct leak investigations, and Trump has said any the leakers 'should be prosecuted.'
Trump also responded by attacking CNN and The Times in highly personal terms. On Wednesday, when he called for one of three CNN reporters who broke the initial story to be fired, CNN said 'we stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand's journalism and specifically her and her colleagues' reporting' about the intelligence assessment.
CNN noted that its coverage of the matter accurately characterized the findings, 'which are in the public interest.'
The Times' lead newsroom lawyer, David E. McCraw, made some similar points in his response to Brito on Thursday.
'The American public has a right to know whether the attack on Iran — funded by taxpayer dollars and of enormous consequence to every citizen — was a success,' McCraw wrote. 'We rely on our intelligence services to provide the kind of impartial assessment that we all need in a democracy to judge our country's foreign policy and the quality of our leaders' decisions.'
Therefore, he wrote, 'it would be irresponsible for a news organization to suppress that information and deny the public the right to hear it. And it would be even more irresponsible for a president to use the threat of libel litigation to try to silence a publication that dared to report that the trained, professional, and patriotic intelligence experts employed by the U.S. government thought that the President may have gotten it wrong in his initial remarks to the country.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
10 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Mexicans in US Are Sending Less Money Home-Experts Are Divided on Why
Mexican immigrants living in the United States are sending less money home to relatives via remittances, according to new research. Remittances are the money migrants living in the U.S. send back to family members in their home countries. They are a major source of income for some communities, including in Mexico, which is the world's second-largest recipient of remittances. There are some 12.3 million Mexicans living abroad, with 97 percent living in the U.S., according to BBVA Research. In 2024, Mexicans living in the U.S. sent a record $63.2 billion home in remittances. However, in the first four months of 2025, the central bank recorded $19.02 billion in remittances, a 2.5 percent decrease from the same period last year. This means that remittances sent to Mexico declined 12.1 percent in April compared to the same period a year earlier, according to central bank data. This is the steepest drop in over a decade. Trump's Immigration Crackdown Since assuming office for the second time, President Donald Trump has vowed to crack down on border security, carry out mass deportations and end federal benefits for people residing in the country illegally. Eri Zolov, a history professor at Stony Brook University in New York, said the "growing fear" of deportation might affect Mexicans' remittance behavior. "I would imagine that the recent decline in remittances reflects a growing fear that ICE agents may be lurking around the places where undocumented workers use to send money home," he told Newsweek. "This has already been demonstrated with raids at Home Depot stores (where day laborers traditionally congregated) and now at hotels and farms. I haven't read that ICE raids have transpired at Western Union and similar remittance locales, but it would certainly be reasonable from an undocumented migrant's perspective that these would be logical targets." He added that fear of detainment might encourage Mexicans to hoard cash rather than send it home. "Moreover, as raids increase, more generally undocumented workers no doubt are holding onto their cash in the event they need to stay even further 'under the radar' and avoid working situations that may place them at risk," he said. Tony Payan, a U.S.-Mexico studies fellow and executive director of the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, agreed that the Trump administration's "aggressive crackdown on immigration" is having an impact. "Migrants may be finding it more difficult to work or may be considerably more cautious about the way they work," he told Newsweek. "There is a substantive number of migrants that work as day laborers, and they may be abstaining from working for fear of the raids. Or, employers may be more hesitant to employ them for fear of being fined (although there does not seem to be any consequence for employers at this point, despite the law). "On this same score, it could be that as the U.S. enters an economic slowdown, many employers may cut just those jobs that migrants occupy. Adding to this, migrants might be saving money in case they cannot find work and feel that they need to have a savings reserve, at least while the raids and current immigration policy against them eases out." Ana Lopez Garcia, an assistant professor of global migration at Maastricht University, disagreed. "Actually, research shows that when people feel threatened with deportation, they often increase remittances to make sure they have something to fall back on if they return home," she told Newsweek. "So I don't think deportation is the main reason for the decline." Indeed, for Garcia, economic factors play a larger role. On April 2, which he dubbed "Liberation Day," Trump announced tariffs on countries worldwide. Along with a 10 percent "baseline" tariff on almost all imported goods, Trump introduced "reciprocal" tariffs on some trading partners, such as 20 percent on the European Union and 26 percent on India. Following the negative market reaction, Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs, while maintaining the baseline rate. This week, the Federal Reserve downgraded expectations for U.S. growth to 1.4 percent from 2.1 percent in December. "What we've seen in the past, like during the 2007 recession, is that remittances to Mexico usually go down when the U.S. economy slows down," Garcia said. Barry Maydom, a senior lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London's School of Social Sciences, agreed. He told Newsweek that while there had been a steady downward trend in remittances to Mexico, the "large drop" in April could be attributed to "greater economic uncertainty related to tariff policies." House Republicans added a provision to Trump's "big, beautiful bill" that would impose a 3.5 percent excise tax on remittance transfers. The measure, which would exempt U.S. citizens, would impact more than 40 million people, including green card holders and those on temporary work visas, such as H-1B, H-2A, and H-2B. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called the proposed measure, which has not come into effect, "unacceptable." Maydom said that it was "possible that Mexicans in the U.S. are starting to move towards using informal methods of sending remittances home (sending goods or cash by post, using informal money transfer networks) in anticipation of the potential remittance tax and in response to high-profile deportation actions." "The official stats only include formal transfers (through banks, Western Union etc), so a shift towards informal methods of sending remittances would show up as a decline," he told Newsweek. But Garcia suggested it was unlikely to have a big impact. "While [the tax] hasn't been applied yet, we should keep in mind that sending remittances to Mexico is quite cheap compared to sending money to other regions like Africa," she said. Related Articles Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum Tells Trump, 'We're No One's Piñata'DACA-Recipient in Green Card Process Stuck in Mexico After Visa AppointmentMap Shows $10B Rail Megaproject Between US and MexicoWoman Goes To Connect With Nature, Almost Connects With 'Afterlife' Instead 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Miami Herald
10 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Trump administration restores funds for HIV prevention following outcry
The Trump administration has lifted a freeze on federal funds for HIV prevention and surveillance programs, officials said, following an outcry from HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health received notice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday that it had been awarded nearly $20 million for HIV prevention for the 12-month period that began June 1 - an increase of $338,019 from the previous year. "Let's be clear - the Trump administration's move to freeze HIV prevention funding was reckless, illegal and put lives at risk," said Rep. Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, in a statement. "I'm relieved the CDC finally did the right thing - but this never should have happened." The CDC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Friedman and other advocates for HIV prevention funding sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, warning that proposed cuts to these programs would reverse years of progress combating the disease and cause spikes in new cases - especially in California and among the LGBTQ+ community. The letter cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, suggesting the cuts could lead to 143,000 additional HIV infections nationwide and 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years. Los Angeles County, which stood to lose nearly $20 million in annual federal HIV prevention funding, was looking at terminating contracts with 39 providers. Experts said the dissolution of that network could result in as many as 650 new cases per year - pushing the total number of new infections per year in the county to roughly 2,000. "Public Health is grateful for the support and advocacy from the Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles County Congressional delegation, and all of our community based providers in pushing CDC to restore this Congressionally approved funding," a spokeswoman for the county's health department said. "Looking forward, it is important to note that the President's FY26 budget proposes to eliminate this funding entirely, and we urge our federal partners to support this critical lifesaving funding," she said. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Gavin Newsom sues Fox News for $787M in defamation case over Trump call
Gavin Newsom is taking a page right out of Donald Trump's media playbook. The California governor accused Fox News of defamation in a lawsuit Friday morning, alleging the network should fork over $787 million after host Jesse Watters claimed Newsom lied about his phone calls with Trump, who ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles this month. Newsom's lawyers argue Watters' program misleadingly edited a video of Trump to support the claim. The Democratic likely presidential hopeful's request for damages is nearly identical to the $787.5 million sum Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 to settle another defamation case over election falsehoods. And it comes amid a spate of lawsuits from Trump against major media and other companies that resulted in multi-million dollar settlements. "If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump's behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,' Newsom told POLITICO in a statement. 'Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine." Public officials must clear an extremely high legal standard to prevail in defamation cases, as the U.S. Supreme Court established six decades ago in New York Times v. Sullivan. But the lawsuit's filing marks a pointed escalation in Newsom's feud with the Republican president and his allies in media. Newsom is suing in his personal capacity and has agreed to pay any possible fines or penalties from his campaign account, aides said. Any proceeds from the case to Newsom would be disseminated to anti-Trump causes. Newsom's suit echoes Trump's own lawsuits against major news networks like ABC, which agreed in December to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation case over George Stephanopoulos' inaccurate claim that Trump was found civilly liable for rape. (Trump was actually found civilly liable for sexual abuse, though the judge in the case later ruled that it was accurate in 'common modern parlance' to say Trump had been found liable for rape.) Trump in another suit accused CBS' '60 Minutes' last fall of misleadingly editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential race. At least two executives from the company have since left their posts and the unresolved CBS suit has become a central drama in the pending sale of a controlling stake in Paramount. Newsom's lawyers said he is prepared to drop the lawsuit if Fox retracts its claims and Watters apologizes to him on air. A copy of Newsom's complaint filed in the Delaware Superior Court — in the same state where Fox News is incorporated — claims he last spoke with Trump for approximately 16 minutes by phone on June 7, one day before the president deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops over Newsom's objections to quell protests in Los Angeles. Trump, however, told reporters on June 10 he had spoken with Newsom 'a day ago,' implying a conversation took place the same day 700 U.S. Marines were deployed to Los Angeles. Newsom refuted Trump's claim in a post on X minutes later. That evening, Watters played an edited clip of Trump's remarks on air before asking, 'Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?' He simultaneously showed a screenshot of the president's call history, obtained by Fox host John Roberts, showing Trump's last call with Newsom was on June 7, as the governor had claimed. Newsom's lawyers argue the incident meets the legal standard for defamation and potentially harmed the governor's standing with voters in future elections. Additionally, they claimed it violated California's Unfair Competition Law, which outlaws 'deceptive and unfair business practices.' Mark Bankson and another private lawyer representing Newsom, Michael Teter, summarized their case in a five-page letter to Fox on Friday littered with biting insults of the network's credibility and sarcastic jabs at Trump's mental acuity. 'It is perhaps unsurprising that a near-octogenarian with a history of delusionary public statements and unhinged late-night social media screeds might confuse the dates,' the lawyers wrote. 'But Fox's decision to cover up for President Trump's error cannot be so easily dismissed.' Newsom's suit adds further drama to his love-hate relationship with Fox. He's an avid viewer who's enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the network at times over the last three decades, reveling in the ability to go toe-to-toe with firebrand hosts like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly in front of millions of conservatives. Yet he's often decried Fox's rightward tilt while smiling for its cameras, as he did in 2023 when heaccused Hannity of helping Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, cheat in a primetime debate. His relationship with Trump is more complex but follows a similar rhythm of a tense rivalry punctuated by moments of collaboration. This year alone, Newsom hugged Trump as the president deplaned to tour wildfire damage in Los Angeles, only to sue him over tariffs months later before savagely attacking the president in a June primetime address that catapulted him back to the forefront of Democratic resistance against the president's agenda. Newsom's tense face-off with Trump put him squarely in conservative media's bullseye. Just last week, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post mocked Newsom on its front page with a photo of him sipping wine in Napa on the same weekend Trump called in Guard troops. Newsom's press office has since said he was at a cancer fundraiser honoring his late mother, who died of breast cancer. The governor's legal team is no stranger to high-profile defamation cases. Bankson represented the parents of an elementary school student killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in a defamation suit against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Bankson's team secured a verdict in 2022 ordering Jones to pay $49.3 million in total damages.
