Donald Trump's Amazing Cease & Desist Letter

Donald Trump goes after a conservative group for calling him a liberal.

Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy remains the gift that keeps on giving. From building walls to “looking at” getting rid of Muslims, Trump’s campaign is frenetic performance art that can only be fully grasped by wrestling aficionados and Barthes scholars.

And now he’s gone lawyer ball on a conservative think tank, threatening a libel suit if they don’t knock off the criticism. And it’s classic Trump.

While pundits and pollsters keep pretending this Donald Trump thing isn’t really happening, the Club for Growth, the real-life manifestation of the club the Duke brothers frequent in Trading Places, is genuinely worried about the prospect of a Trump nomination and invested in an attack ad called “Politician”:

But if there’s a single animating principle to this campaign, it’s relentless offense. Rather than sit there and take a random attack or gently downplay it in the media, Trump’s going to the mat immediately. Alan Garten, General Counsel of the Trump Organization, fired off a humdinger of a cease and desist letter warning Club for Growth of dire consequences if they keep mischaracterizing his boss with scurrilous statements… that Trump made in 2004.

Garten’s letter is a distillation of Trump, mixing boilerplate legalese with childish contempt. For example:

Simply stated, your Attack Ad is not only completely disingenuous, but replete with outright lies, false, defamatory and destructive statements and downright fabrications which you fully know to be untrue, thereby exposing you and your so-called “club” to liability for damages and other tortious harm. For example, while your Attack Ad blatantly misrepresents to the public that Mr. Trump “supports higher taxes”, nothing could be further from the truth. To be clear, Mr. Trump’s tax plan, which is scheduled to be released later this week, supports a lowering of taxes.

Sponsored

“So-called ‘club'” is just fantastic.

Club for Growth’s basis for the attack is a 2000 article where Trump proposes off-the-cuff (though is there any other Trump policy proposal?) that the wealthy kick in more over the short term to eliminate the debt. Not to side with Trump, but that is some weak tea. That said, it’s also not really libelous — even if Garten added Trump outside counsel Marc Kasowitz to the letter to raise the threat level — but that’s probably not the point.

No, the point is that Trump didn’t roll over, he punched them right back in the mouth. He’s a fighter. That’s the whole schtick. And in the process he earned free media for a blistering indictment of Club for Growth’s integrity:

As I am sure you recall, it was only a few short months ago that you very openly and shamelessly attempted to extort Mr. Trump to the tune of $1 million in exchange for your political support. Indeed, you were not even the least bit discreet about your motives in that, after meeting with Mr. Trump, you immediately followed up with a June 2, 2015 letter requesting a “contribution of $1 million” in exchange for an endorsement by your organization’s political action committee…. American politics at its worst. If that is not a “shake-down”, I do not know what IS.

Shorter version: these Club for Growth guys are political scam artists and anyone they endorse bribed the so-called club for the endorsement. This is the sentiment that some producer is going to turn into “the hot angle” tomorrow when the “Donald Trump is trying to sue” angle grows stale. If Trump’s strategy works, he’ll have marginalized a wealthy PAC and cast aspersions on his chief political rivals without ever making an ad buy.

Sponsored

What’s Club for Growth going to say? They wouldn’t dare open their books to prove this didn’t happen, so they’ll offer some lame denial and move on. Trump draws blood, he wins. Pretty cagey actually.

The cease and desist letter remains the perfect vehicle for a guy like Trump: low commitment, potentially high impact. If you’re shameless enough not to worry about being trolled on the law in a response, there’s not really a downside.

(Read the whole letter on the next page…)