Judge tosses Trump’s $100M suit against NY Times over tax records, orders ex-president to pay legal fees

A New York judge tossed Donald Trump’s $100 million lawsuit against the New York Times and ordered him to pay all of the paper’s legal fees, according to a ruling Wednesday.

The former president’s claims that the Gray Lady and three of its reporters hatched an “insidious plot” to get his private tax records “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed wrote in the decision.

In the 2021 suit, the embattled 45th president alleged that Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner schemed with Trump’s niece, Mary, to disclose his 20-year-old documents.

But the paper’s newsgathering — which ultimately exposed Trump’s tax woes in a Pulitzer-winning 2018 article — was “at the very core of protected First Amendment activity,” the judge ruled.

Reed dismissed the case in part because the Times’ reporting was “a matter of high public interest,” he wrote.

“The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today,” a paper spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast.

“It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine newsgathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public.”

Claims against the ex-president’s niece have yet to be ruled upon.