Trump allowed by judge to amend $15 billion suit against NYT

Erik Larson, Bloomberg News on Jul 27, 2026

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The federal judge in Florida overseeing President Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times has deferred ruling on the newspaper’s request to toss the case, and instead is allowing Trump to revise his complaint.

The president has until Aug. 27 to file an amended suit, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday ruled Monday, giving Trump’s lawyer a chance to clear up potential deficiencies. The New York Times will then have three weeks to file a “succinct” response, the judge said.

Merryday, an appointee of former President George H. W. Bush, held oral arguments last week in Tampa, Florida, on the newspaper’s dismissal request and had been expected to rule at any time. At the hearing, lawyers for the Times said the suit lacked evidence of wrongdoing.

A representative for Trump’s legal team said the ruling “underscores President Trump’s powerful case” against the Times.

The Times didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The suit is one of many Trump or his company have filed seeking billions of dollars in damages from the press and banks he has accused of wronging him. The Wall Street Journal and the British Broadcasting Corp. have also moved to dismiss defamation lawsuits filed by Trump, raising similar arguments as the Times about an alleged lack of evidence against them.

Monday’s order didn’t specify what, if anything, the judge found to be deficient with Trump’s complaint against the Times. But Merryday pointed to an April filing by the president’s attorney asking to have the newspaper’s dismissal motion rejected or to allow Trump to amend the suit if the judge “is inclined to consider the complaint to be somehow deficient.”

The Times has argued that Trump’s suit fails to explain exactly how dozens of disputed statements found in a book and three news articles at the center of the case are false.

The newspaper also argues that Trump hasn’t provided evidence of “actual malice,” a high bar for public figures in defamation suits. The legal doctrine requires that such plaintiffs show that journalists knew what they were reporting was false or acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth.

The suit claims Trump’s reputation was harmed by the 2024 book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success and by three Times articles that were published in the runup to the 2024 election. The president argues the book and articles wrongfully demean his successes in business and politics and that the Times generally has acted as a “mouthpiece” for Democrats.

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