President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has vowed to file a lawsuit against CNN and is seeking a “substantial payment” in the wake of a series of undercover videos showing bias against the Republican president inside the network.
“Never in the history of this country has a president been the subject of such a sustained barrage of unfair, unfounded, unethical and unlawful attacks by so-called ‘mainstream’ news, as the current situation,” Trump lawyer Charles Harder writes to CNN President Jeff Zucker and Executive Vice President David Vigilante.
“Accordingly, my clients intend to file legal action against you, to seek compensatory damages, treble damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, reimbursement of legal costs, and all other available legal and equitable remedies, to the maximum extent permitted by law,” the letter continues.
“Please contact the undersigned to discuss an appropriate resolution of this matter, which would include a substantial payment of damages, as well as all other appropriate measures that are necessary to fully address the magnitude of the situation,” it adds.
This week, Project Veritas released several videos featuring CNN employees decrying the network’s coverage in the Trump era as well as audio of Zucker pushing staff to vigorously cover the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into the president.
Monday’s video showed a CNN media coordinator stating CNN’s president harbors a “personal vendetta” against President Trump, while Thursday’s footage is of a network field operations manager conceding the network is “totally left-leaning.”
According to Harder, the admissions made by CNN staffers are a breach of journalistic ethics.
“Recently released video footage of individuals alleged to be your employees indicates that your reporting relating to President Trump is contrary to your own mission and the aforementioned Code of Ethics. Your own employees appear to state that CNN is focused on trying to ‘take down President Trump,’ driven by a ‘personal vendetta’ that Mr. Zucker purportedly has against him, rather than reporting the news in an objective manner,” the lawyer wrote.
The Trump re-election campaign’s letter to CNN was first reported by the Washington Examiner.
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