Donald Trump Files Lawsuit Against 20 Media Outlets—Full List

The organization through which former president Donald Trump owns Truth Social, the social media platform, has filed a lawsuit against 20 media outlets, including Newsweek, alleging they defamed it through reports concerning its losses.

The complaint, filed by the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) in the twelfth circuit court in Sarasota County, Florida, on Monday, describes reports that the company had lost $73 million since being launched as "an utter fabrication."

Lawyers for the company argued that the reports in various outlets constituted an "unprecedented and seemingly coordinated media campaign," referencing that all "reported the exact same false number within approximately 24 hours of one another, each citing to a public Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") filing, in which the mystery $73 million loss appears nowhere."

"This was a coordinated effort to damage TMTG's reputation, degrade the firm's financial standing, freeze its access to capital, and torpedo the anticipated merger between Digital World Acquisition Corporation ("DWAC") and TMTG," the company said.

The losses figure was also referenced by talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who is not named in the complaint. Newsweek has since published a correction to its article.

DWAC, a mergers and asset acquisition firm, has been planning to merge with TMTG since October 2021, but the transaction has been beset with several missed deadlines. While the deal is thought to be a potentially lucrative one, DWAC expressed doubts in the SEC filing about TMTG having the "sufficient funds to meet its liabilities as they fall due."

In October 2023, DWAC said it was returning over half a billion dollars to investors after the two companies missed a September 2022 deadline to execute the merger. A new deadline has been set for December 31 this year.

The deal is hoped to give the Truth Social platform a strong financial position to remain competitive among a growing number of social media sites. However, its main attraction, Trump himself, returned to X, formerly Twitter, after a two-year hiatus in August and following his account being unbanned by X's new owner Elon Musk, while an exclusivity agreement between the former president and Truth Social expired in June.

An SEC filing by DWAC on November 13 gave an overview of each company's financial operations. It disclosed that in 2022 Truth Social recorded an operating loss of $23 million, with net sales of $1.4 million. In the first half of 2023, it recorded an operating loss of $7.6 million, with net sales of $2.3 million. Since start of operations on February 8, 2021, until June 30, 2023, TMTG recorded a total net loss of $31.5 million, the filing shows.

Since its launch until the end of 2021, TMTG recorded a net loss of $59 million, but in 2022 it recorded a net profit of $50.5 million, when it got a $75 million boost from a "change in fair value of derivative liabilities." In the year to June 30, 2023, TMTG recorded a net loss of nearly $23 million.

When the $73 million figure was first reported, Truth Social released a statement which said: "Unsurprisingly, the Fake News is defaming Truth Social, reporting utterly false information, and ignoring that yesterday's filing was a crucial milestone toward completing our proposed merger."

As well as Newsweek, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Daily News, MSNBC, CNBC, Forbes, Axios and Reuters were named in Monday's lawsuit. Rolling Stone magazine and the owner of The Hill are also listed.

Alongside those outlets are British newspapers The Guardian and the Daily Mail, as well as the owner and executive editor of the Miami Herald newspaper.

Several online-only outlets are named, including Deadline Hollywood, the owner of Benzinga, MarketWatch, the Daily Beast, the owner of Gizmodo, Mediaite and Salon.

Some of the outlets named in the lawsuit have also issued updates to their articles removing the $73 million figure.

The lawsuit alleges one count of defamation and one of injurious falsehood. It asks for damages of $1.5 billion and injunctive relief "prohibiting the publication or republication of the defamatory statements." It also demands a jury trial.