Trump's long-stalled suit against Bob Woodward dismissed
U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe's ruling comes a year and a half after Woodward and his publisher asked the judge to dismiss the suit. Trump's attorneys had long complained about the lack of progress, repeatedly urging Gardephe to rule.
An appointee of former President George W. Bush, Gardephe rejected Trump's arguments that he is a joint author of the tapes and ruled that even if he wasn't, the interview responses are protected copyright.
'There is almost no support in the case law for the notion that an interviewee has a copyright interest in his responses to interview questions, and such a conclusion would run counter to animating principles of the Copyright Act,' the judge pushed back.
The judge also dismissed Trump's state law claims, ruling those were preempted by federal copyright law.
'In another biased action by a New York Court, this wrongful decision was issued without even affording President Trump the basic due process of a hearing. We will continue to ensure that those who commit wrongdoing against President Trump and all Americans are held accountable,' a spokesman for Trump's legal team said in a statement.
Trump sued Woodward in January 2023 after giving him 19 interviews for his book, 'Rage.'
The lawsuit conceded Trump gave the interviews and permitted Woodward to record them, but the complaint claimed the journalist and his publisher were not authorized to sell the audio recordings themselves.
The $49 million lawsuit named Woodward, Simon & Schuster and its then-parent company, Paramount Global, as defendants. Paramount later sold the publishing giant to a private investment firm.
The Hill has reached out to Simon & Schuster and Paramount for comment.
Trump's attorney had repeatedly expressed frustration with the judge for mulling the dismissal motion for months without taking action.
Following Trump's election, his attorneys kept pressing the judge to move ahead, but in December, the judge said he was 'at work' on it and declined to expedite it further.
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USA Today
15 minutes ago
- USA Today
Reactions to President Trump's demand that the Commanders change their name
Trump calls for Washington and Cleveland to change their names back to the Redskins and Indians. 97% of you agreed both teams should do this in a recent poll I ran on here. The discussion about the Washington Commanders' name just won't seem to go away. New ownership, led by managing partner Josh Harris, has already come out and said the name will not change. Even if Harris wanted to change the name back to the Redskins, the team he grew up idolizing, he understands it's simply not possible. President Donald Trump has other ideas. Multiple times since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has been questioned about the Commanders. He has said that he wouldn't have changed the name. The team changed its name initially in July 2020 from Redskins to the "Football Team," as corporate sponsors threatened to pull their support. In 2022, the "Football Team" became the Commanders. While the name and uniforms have been a divisive issue for longtime fans, the team had its best season in 33 years in 2024, so while the name may not be overwhelmingly popular with all, winning made things a little better. Back to Trump. On Sunday morning, Trump posted the following message on social media. He wasn't done. There's more: Like with everything President Trump discusses, this blew up. Of course, there are many who believe this is a positive, while the usual detractors remain. In short, everything comes back to politics, regardless of your "side" or political allegiance. Will Trump get involved in the RFK talks? The DC City Council didn't help things by not voting on this before the July 15 deadline. Why? Because of politics. Anyhow, let's look at some of these wide-ranging reactions. I played in the NFL and was drafted by the Washington the 'Washington Football Team' or the 'Commanders.' @POTUS is right. It's time to bring the Redskins' name back. The thing about the Washington Redskins stuff is that Donald Trump is a pedophile, a rapist, and a human trafficker, and his party and his base don't give a shit. Rick Snider's Washington says Donald Trump is right - bring back the Washington Redskins. Gimme two minutes. 🤞 Deport Rosie?Imprison Obama?Demand the Redskins name come back?He's playing all the hits I'm not a Redskins fan, but would love to see them make their name great again!Same with the Cleveland Indians! President Trump says BRING THEM BACK- Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians!Want them back? Share this post - Make the Indians Great Again! Look, if you want the Redskins name Stand ten toes on that. That's your right. But don't try, as a non-Native American, to use them to futher your cause. Some of you couldn't care less about Native Americans or their issues. The native community wants the name Redskins back. It's the white liberals who cry about it. I love you Mr president @realDonaldTrumpI'm sure you been reading my tweets.I take yall we were getting our Redskins means culture, passion and fans love native Americans and native Americans love RedskinsHTTR #ForOurName This is exactly what I'd expect from Trump, who had six companies go teams make more than double in local corporate sponsorships/partnerships than in sales of their licensed apparel. Going to back to Redskins is bad for business (like Trump was for many of his). President Trump is right, as usual — changing the Redskins and Indians names was NEVER about real progress. It ERASED history, ignored fans, and gave in to WOKE elites. These names honored tradition and identity. Bring them back! I fully support the President and his stance! Donald Trump threatens to block a new stadium deal for the Washington Commanders unless the team changes its name back to the this legal? I can't lie…I do miss the Redskins The reason Trump still wants to call them the Washington Redskins is because he genuinely believes that white people should always be able to be as freely racist as they want to be. He wouldn't like them being the Rednecks. Trump wants to bring back the RedskinsI'm down!! President Trump is calling for the restoration of the names of the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland 100% right! Just like with our military bases, this is a shameful legacy of peak woke and should be corrected immediately. 5 years ago: "No stadium unless you change the name FROM Redskins"Today: "No stadium unless you change the name TO Redskins"😐 Trump says he'll cancel the new Washington football stadium deal if they don't change back to the RedskinsWe finally have a GOP leader that uses his power instead of being a coward Trump wants Washington to change the name back to the Redskins 'immediately'
CNN
15 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: This week's big questions: Can Trump finally quell the Epstein storm — and is it hurting his presidency?
Even President Donald Trump doesn't seem to think his angry and chaotic efforts to end the renewed storm over convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will work. He warned in a weekend social media post that 'nothing will be good enough' to satisfy what he claims are leftists and troublemakers fanning the uproar. In reality, however, the controversy was heightened by Trump's defensive outbursts following his aides' clumsy efforts to quell conspiracies they fueled before the 2024 election over Epstein's death in prison and a supposed celebrity client list. But Trump's Truth Social post raises important questions. Will the intrigue, which differs from most of his political tangles since it set the president against his own base, be accelerated by new revelations, including curiosity over Trump's past ties to Epstein, an accused sex trafficker? Or, after two weeks of internal recriminations, will the MAGA movement unite to protect its patron following a Wall Street Journal report Thursday on Trump and Epstein, which the president used to set up his trademark assault on 'fake news'? Trump did everything he could to ignite new political fires Sunday to distract attention from the Epstein saga. He demanded that the NFL's Washington Commanders play again as the Redskins and blasted Obama administration officials over intelligence findings that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help him. But the Epstein matter has so far created its own momentum and defied his efforts to quiet it. It's rather curious in this sense, since it seems less pertinent to the lives of millions of Americans than the impact of Trump's radical policy moves and power grabs, which have repeatedly tested the Constitution and risked harming the economy. But scandals that boil away and don't fade are always a dangerous sign for White Houses, even when the president has a Teflon hide as thick as Trump's. One reason this controversy has legs is that its foundations are part of the MAGA philosophy — the idea that hidden elites in the intelligence agencies and government are running an American 'deep state' that hides the truth about issues like child sex trafficking. Declarations by Trump officials who fomented the conspiracy that there is nothing to it seemed only to validate the concerns of committed conspiracists in the movement. The uproar showed no sign of passing at the weekend, frustrating Trump's efforts to highlight the success of his first six months in power, which he has used to gut parts of the federal government and to send a jolt of social change through American life. Democrats launched a new push to discomfit Trump, parroting demands by some MAGA activists for total transparency over the Epstein case as they try to finally find some traction against a president who has obliterated opposition in Washington. 'The president blaming Democrats for this disaster … is like that CEO that got caught on camera blaming Coldplay,' Sen Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, told CNN's Jake Tapper on 'State of the Union' on Sunday. 'This is his making: He was president when Epstein got indicted for these charges and went to prison. He was president back then. So all of us would believe they know what's in these documents. They know what's there. They have been claiming forever that they should be released.' The administration's missteps might give Democrats an opening, especially since Trump's approval ratings are now in the low 40s and there is growing public concern over his signature hardline deportation policies. A new CNN/SSRS poll Sunday showed that 55% of Americans think Trump has gone too far with his deportations. But despite fierce internal bickering in the MAGA movement, it's doubtful Epstein is a deal-breaker for most of the president's supporters. A CBS News poll Sunday showed GOP voters evenly split over the Trump administration's handling of the matter. A majority of MAGA Republicans said they were satisfied; only 36% of all voters and 11% of Republicans said the issue matters 'a lot' when evaluating Trump's presidency. But if the public feels this way, why won't the storm abate? GOP officeholders are still having a tough time navigating Epstein questions, a sign perhaps that the political impact might be greater than initially expected. Closing ranks around Trump, they are now trying to create a classic GOP vs. Democrats fight that might further confuse and polarize the public. Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett recalled that Democrats had blocked GOP attempts to release all information on the case when they held power in the Senate. 'Where the heck was she the last four years?' Burchett asked, also on 'State of the Union,' in a reference to Klobuchar. Trump's hopes of dampening the furor may depend partly on matters out of his control. But if he simply stopped talking about it, it might help. His frequent outbursts and claims that nobody cares about Epstein could be just Trump being Trump. But they also offered an opening for critics to suggest he's got something to hide. And the weekend brought several media accounts detailing the past relationship between Trump and Epstein — two tabloid fixtures in New York whose association was no secret early in the 21st century. No law enforcement authorities have ever accused Trump of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. But more revelations of their past contacts could enliven public interest and frustrate the president's attempts to change the subject. That does not mean that Trump necessarily did anything wrong, or that anything occurred that could hurt him politically now. It's still not clear whether this is a controversy that could impose a real cost on a presidency or something that could blow over in a couple of weeks. Still, a Wall Street Journal report last week about a collection of letters gifted to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, including a note bearing Trump's name and an outline of a naked woman, is reverberating. CNN has not independently confirmed the report, and the president and his lawyers said the letter supposedly sent by Trump was a fake. Trump has filed a $20 billion libel suit against the paper. But the spectacle of a court battle between the president and The Journal's owner, Rupert Murdoch — a clash between two of the most influential and powerful titans of the conservative movement — is guaranteed to electrify public attention over the Epstein case. But comments by MAGA influencers such as Steve Bannon suggested that a fight between Trump and a paper seen as a pillar of the old right-wing establishment could heal splits in the movement. And Trump is an expert at weaponizing attacks against him to galvanize supporters. Consider how he turned his four criminal indictments into the most famous political comeback in history. There are other aspects of the uproar that make an accurate assessment of its long-term impact impossible. Outsiders can't know for sure whether the Trump Justice Department and FBI leadership are being truthful about the findings of their review of the Epstein case. In a memo that dismayed much of the MAGA media machine, both agencies said there was no incriminating client list, nor evidence that the accused blackmailed prominent individuals. They stood by findings that Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019. Most Washington scandals explode because of a cover-up or political malpractice. There's no public evidence at this stage of the former. But there's plenty to support the idea that this is a political disaster the administration brought upon itself. Attorney General Pam Bondi, for instance, implied earlier this year that she had details of Epstein's client list on her desk, raising expectations among activist MAGA members of bombshell disclosures. Bondi has proved herself a valuable Trump lieutenant, notably in showing the kind of ultimate loyalty to the president and his political cause that many modern attorneys general have preferred to avoid in the interests of the fair administration of justice. But her handling of the Epstein case has been accident-prone and exposed Trump to political risks. If he comes looking for a culprit, her political foundation could quickly erode. As an example of her eagerness to please Trump, Bondi and her team sprang into action quickly last week when the president demanded the release of grand jury testimony from the Epstein prosecution. But even if the judge quickly allows this — which seems unlikely — there's no guarantee it would satisfy the demands for more transparency from Trump's base, and much material would remain under seal. The MAGA meltdown has also presented other members of the administration with tricky political considerations. Vice President JD Vance spent years calling for more transparency on the Epstein files before becoming Trump's running mate. But he was quick to blast the Wall Street Journal report with a profanity on X last week. For now, Vance's political fate rests in Trump's hands. But no Republican who wants to run for president in future can risk being seen as a member of the Beltway 'deep state.' Trump made multiple attempts to change the subject over the weekend. He repeatedly highlighted another conspiracy theory — given life by his director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — that the Obama administration committed treasonous acts when the spy agencies warned of a Russian attempt to influence the 2016 election. Later Sunday, Trump shared an apparent AI-generated video depicting former President Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and jailed in an orange jumpsuit, overlaid to a soundtrack of Trump's campaign anthem 'Y.M.C.A.' And the president warned that he'd thwart a plan for the Commanders to return to the District of Columbia in a new stadium unless they changed their team name. The franchise decided in 2022 after years of pressure from Native American groups to rebrand amid concerns their original name was offensive. Trump also called for baseball's Cleveland Guardians to reclaim their identity as the 'Cleveland Indians' in a characteristic attempt to stoke culture-war controversy to fire up his base and steal oxygen from other issues. This might work for him again. But the fact he's delving into his classic tricks of political distraction is a telling sign he still doesn't know how to end the Epstein morass.
New York Times
16 minutes ago
- New York Times
China Stood Up to Trump, and It's Not Giving Europe an Inch, Either
Having forced the Trump administration into a trade truce through economic pressure and strategic defiance, China now appears to be playing the same kind of hardball with Europe. It has retaliated against trade curbs, accused Europe of protectionism, slowed exports of critical minerals and further embraced Russia, with China's top leader himself pledging support for Moscow just days before a summit of European Union leaders that China is scheduled to host this week. The moves are part of a tough posture that Beijing is taking in its trade and geopolitical disputes with Brussels. China wants Europe to lift heavy tariffs that it has imposed on Chinese electric vehicles and refrain from further restrictions on trade. E.U. leaders see Beijing as effectively supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine, and are also concerned that China is dumping artificially cheap products that could undermine local industries. Beijing has learned that it has leverage it can use against outside pressure. It stood up to the Trump administration's punishing trade war by demonstrating how dependent global industry was on China for its supply of critical minerals. And Beijing likely assesses that it is in a stronger position because Western unity is fracturing, analysts say, with President Trump's 'America First' foreign policy weakening the historical bonds between Europe and the United States. 'Beijing perceives that the global order is in flux,' said Simona Grano, a China expert at the University of Zurich. 'From its perspective, the United States is overstretched and preoccupied with multiple conflicts around the world and domestic polarization.' 'And with signs of division or fatigue within the trans-Atlantic alliance, the Chinese leadership sees more room to assert its interests, not least in trade, tech and security,' Ms. Grano said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
