Judge throws out Trump media group’s lawsuit against The Guardian

A judge on Monday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Donald Trump’s media organization against The Guardian over reports on its ties to a Russian oligarch. 

The president’s legal onslaught against the media – launched via personal lawsuits and through his companies – has resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements from two media outlets, despite the judgment of reputable legal experts that the cases were relatively weak. The president’s track record in court, however, hasn’t yielded quite the same outcomes.

Trump Media & Technology Group brought a suit against The Guardian; Will Wilkerson, a TMTG founder turned whistleblower; and the Sarasota-based Herald-Tribune and one of its reporters, Chris Anderson, over news reports the outlets published in 2023 about federal investigations into payments, totaling $8 million, made to the company by financial institutions linked to an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Guardian reported at the time that investigators were looking into these payments for potential money laundering, and included the caveat that Trump’s media company hadn’t been charged or implicated in any crimes. Follow-up reporting noted that the Putin-linked official, Anton Postolnikov, had provided a lifeline to the president’s faltering media company at a crucial moment. 

In his ruling, Florida circuit court Judge Hunter Carroll, who was appointed in 2016 by Republican then-Gov. Rick Scott, found that Trump has failed to prove The Guardian had acted with “actual malice” – a requirement for a successful defamation claim – when it published its reports. This, Carroll noted, required TMTG to show that “the defendant either knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for its truth.” But he found no such evidence.

“TMTG’s allegations of Guardian and Wilkerson’s bias or ill will, without more, does not show actual malice,” the judge wrote. Furthermore, “TMTG’s allegations that Wilkerson was the sole source for the challenged statements is belied by the face of the article,” he wrote, going on to say that the article cites “sources familiar with the matter” for details the company took umbrage with.

The judge also cited Florida’s anti-SLAPP law, which is designed to prevent suits that stand to quash free speech, in his rationale for dismissing the claims against The Guardian.

The Guardian and Trump Media & Technology Group did not immediately return MS NOW’s requests for comment.

The result of The Guardian case serves as further evidence that organizations that refuse to wilt under Trump and his allies’ aggressive litigation seem to fare better than those who give in without a fight.