Former President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN and is seeking $475 million in punitive damages.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and claims the network used its influence to defeat Trump politically.
Trump also said CNN has carried out a “campaign of libel and slander” against him.
The 29-page lawsuit claims that the network recently increased its attacks on the former president out of fear he’d run for president in 2024.
“CNN’s campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander against the Plaintiff has only escalated in recent months as CNN fears the Plaintiff will run for president in 2024,” it said.
“As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the Left, CNN has tried to taint the Plaintiff with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler,'” it continued.
The lawsuit noted that CNN’s claims are repeatedly reported as true with “with purported factual support.”
One part says CNN newscasters are “acting with real animosity for the Plaintiff and seeking to cause him true harm.”
It also cites several instances where Trump was compared to Adolf Hitler in recent years.
In addition, CNN repeatedly uses the phrase “The Big Lie,” which is “a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” stated the lawsuit.
“As commonly understood: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ The ‘Big Lie’ was used by Hitler to incite hatred of the Jews and to convince people to ostracize Jewish people,” it added.
“The repeated use of the “Big Lie” in relation to the Plaintiff is not innocently rendered, but rather a deliberate effort by CNN to propagate to its audience an association between the Plaintiff and one of the most repugnant figures in modern history,” it claimed.
Trump has not yet announced whether he will run for re-election, however, he has hinted several times that he is considering it.
According to a letter from Trump’s Save America PAC, the former president plans to sue other media giants.
“In the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a large number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and wrongdoing,” Trump wrote.
Last month, Trump was sued by New York state Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly lying about the value of his assets.
He is also facing a criminal investigation by the Justice Department over government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.