Donald J. Trump threatened to sue The New York Times for libel on Wednesday night in response to an article that featured two women accusing him of touching them inappropriately years ago.
The threat of legal action comes as the Trump campaign has been ensnared in controversy after the release of a video last week that showed the Republican nominee for president demeaning women and bragging about being able to force himself on women without consequence. During a presidential debate on Sunday night, Mr. Trump said that it was just “locker-room talk” and that he never did those things.
Mr. Trump told The Times that the allegations of the two women were false and his lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, demanded that the newspaper retract the story and issue an apology.
Mr. Trump has taken an aggressive approach before with a news media that he says is biased against him and he has suggested on the campaign trail that libel laws should be changed so that it is easier crack down on the news media. Recently, Mr. Trump has suggested that he might take legal action after The Times published and wrote about part of his 1995 tax return.
The Times defended the article on Thursday. ”We stand by the story, which falls clearly into the realm of public service journalism,” Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, said in a statement.
A lawsuit by Mr. Trump against The Times could prove more difficult since he is a public figure running for president and it could force him to release information about his sexual behavior.
After The Times published its article, several other news organizations published stories that included different accounts from women who said that Mr. Trump touched them inappropriately or behaved rudely. In the video that emerged last week, Mr. Trump boasted in 2005 that he could kiss and grope women as he pleased because he was a celebrity.
In his letter, which was addressed to The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, Mr. Kasowitz said that The Times’s article was not properly investigated and that it included false and malicious allegations. A failure to retract the story, he wrote, “will leave my client with no option but to pursue all available actions and remedies.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s behavior continued to draw criticism on Thursday from fellow Republicans. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and presidential candidate in 2012, suggested that there were two Donald Trumps.
“There’s a big Trump and a little Trump,” he said in an appearance on the Fox Business Network. “The little Trump is frankly pathetic.”
NY Times
