Late Wednesday, a lawyer for Trump, Marc E. Kasowitz, wrote to theTimes demanding a retraction of its article and threatening to sue for libel. TheTimes refused, saying it had “published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern.”
.. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal, citing Trump’s advisers and other Republican sources, reported that the candidate had “effectively given up the conventional wisdom of trying to reach voters far outside his core of support.” Rather than reaching out to moderates, independents, and other groups he would need to bring over to win a majority in November, the Journal article said, Trump now “plans to renew the nationalist themes that built his base and amplify his no-holds-barred attacks against Hillary Clinton to try to depress Democratic voter turnout.”
.. Such a blitzkrieg strategy makes no sense, of course. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to get Democrats to the polls, it is the sight of Trump going around the country for the next three and half weeks inciting bigotry and racial hatred, launching personal attacks on his opponents, and generally acting like a deranged person. But, as my colleague Ryan Lizza pointed out on Wednesday, there is reason to believe that Trump’s true motivation is no longer winning: it is finding someone to blame for his upcoming defeat.
.. This is reality. You know it, they know it, and pretty much the whole world knows it. The establishment and their media neighbors wield control over this nation through means that are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, rapist, xenophobe, and morally deformed. They will attack you. They will slander you. They will seek to destroy your career and your family. They will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation. They will lie, lie, lie, and then again they will do worse than that.
Hulk Hogan’s Lawyers Have Made Suing Gawker Their ‘Bread And Butter’
Harder had made moves to start his own practice. With plans to take some of his clients with him, he teamed up with Mirell, a First Amendment expert who spent 32 years at Loeb & Loeb LLP, and Jeffrey Abrams, a celebrity estates specialist who worked with Harder at Wolf Rifkin.
.. while Harder was the face of Hogan’s Hollywood legal team, Mirell was the brains.
.. Gawker has been sued at least 11 times in federal courts since 2013. Harder’s current firm has worked for Gawker’s opposition in at least five of those lawsuits
.. In an interviewwith The New York Times, Thiel said that he has spent an estimated $10 million to fund lawsuits against Gawker.
“It’s safe to say this is not the only one,” Thiel told the Times, when asked which other cases he has backed.
.. When asked why Harder Mirell would get involved in such a suit despite its focus on celebrity clients, one person who used to work for the firm speculated it was a matter of following the money. Given the involvement of a third party who was financing the Hogan suit, the firm likely had an incentive to find more cases against Gawker.
..
Gawker founder Nick Denton also had his own pointed inquiries, penning an open letter to Thiel with 10 “immediate questions” for the Silicon Valley billionaire. “Is your goal to bankrupt, buy, or wound Gawker Media?” Denton wrote.
Roger Ailes Hints at Suit Against New York Magazine
A lawyer for Roger Ailes, the former chairman of Fox News, has sent a letter to New York magazine suggesting he might take legal action over its reporting about Mr. Ailes.
.. Charles J. Harder, who was Hulk Hogan’s lawyer in his successful lawsuit against Gawker Media
.. Mr. Harder is also representing Melania Trump, the wife of the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, in a libel lawsuit filed last week against the publisher of The Daily Mail.
Trump: A True Story
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable — cornered, out-prepared and under oath.
Thirty times, they caught him.
.. Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
.. That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, in his mind, because he saw the situation more positively than others did... The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded him four Pinocchios — the maximum a statement can receive — 39 times since he announced his bid last summer. In many cases, his statements echo those in the 2007 deposition: They are specific, checkable — and wrong.Trump said he opposed the Iraq War at the start. He didn’t. He said he’d never mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. He had. Trump also said the National Football League had sent him a letter, objecting to a presidential debate that was scheduled for the same time as a football game. It hadn’t... Last week, Trump claimed that he had seen footage — taken at a top-secret location and released by the Iranian government — showing a plane unloading a large amount of cash to Iran from the U.S. government. He hadn’t. Trump later conceded he’d been mistaken — he’d seen TV news video that showed a plane during a prisoner release... O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million...The depth of that financial hole made it seem even more impressive that Trump had climbed out again. But the figure was wrong. His actual debts had been much less.
“I pointed it out to the person who wrote the book,” Trump said, meaning McIver.
“Right after she wrote the book?”
“That’s correct,” Trump said.
Then the lawyer showed Trump another book he’d written with McIver, three years later.
“In fact, I was $9 billion in debt,” Trump read aloud. A similar error, repeated. It was McIver’s fault again.
“She probably forgot,” Trump said.
“And when you read it, you didn’t correct it?”
“I didn’t see it,” Trump said.
“You didn’t see it.”
“I read it very quickly,” Trump said about a book he was credited with writing.
.. Trump’s answer here was that the truth about his wealth was — in essence — up to him to decide.“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” Trump said. “But I try.”..In a brief statement this week, Trump said he felt the lawsuit was a success, despite his loss.
“O’Brien knows nothing about me,” Trump said. “His book was a total failure and ultimately I had great success doing what I wanted to do — costing this third rate reporter a lot of legal fees.”