Trump Complaint Against NYT Gets Benchslapped Into Oblivion

The president suffered a minor setback this morning in his defamation suit against the New York Times. Judge Steven Merryday struck the entire complaint for standing “unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.”

Ooopsie!

And all Trump’s friends said it was going so great!

Despite filing this suit in “the Great State of Florida,” specifically the Tampa Division of the Middle District — not the Southern District where he lives — the president did not manage to land on the docket of one of his own appointees. Instead he got Judge Merryday, who’s been on the bench since 1992 and very much does not have time for your shit.

The court was deeply unimpressed with the 85-page screed praising the Dear Leader’s “decades of magnificent real estate achievements,” “sui generis charisma and unique business acumen,” “transcendent ability to defy wrongful conventions,” and his “one-of-a-kind, unprecedented personal brand alone [which] is reasonably estimated to be worth over $100,000,000,000.” Apparently the judge wasn’t interested in hearing about Donald Trump’s 1990s cameos on Wrestlemania V, All My Children, and The Nanny.

“As every member of the bar of every federal court knows (or is presumed to know), Rule 8(a), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, requires that a complaint include ‘a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,’” Judge Merryday begins, noting that the plaintiff spends 79 of those pages detailing “many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations.”

“As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” he continues

Presumably these lawyers feel the sting of humiliation at being treated like wild-eyed, pro se, SovCits lecturing the court on the illegality of the federal income tax. Or perhaps not.

Local counsel Alejandro Brito, a commercial lawyer from Coral Gables, probably burned off his capacity for shame when he argued that CNN defamed Trump by using the phrase “Big Lie.” Brito did, however, manage to negotiate Trump’s settlement with ABC, and he’s currently spearheading the suit against the Wall Street Journal for saying Trump drew boobs two decades ago for Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday.

Brito’s co-counsel Edward Paltzik filed the complaint against CBS in Texas that led to a $16 million gift to Trump’s presidential library, after which the FCC approved CBS parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance. Paltzik has failed to replicate that success in Iowa, however, where he is currently pratfalling all over three separate dockets — one state, two federal — in a SLAPP suit against the Des Moines Register. Rounding out the dream team is MAGA goober Daniel Epstein, who once promised to sue the US government over the raid on Mar-a-Lago, demanding $100,000,000 for “intrusion upon seclusion.” That suit was never filed, but Epstein really did sue Chief Justice Roberts on the theory that the judiciary is part of the executive branch and thus subject to FOIA.

Safe bet that these guys don’t embarrass easy!

Judge Merryday struck the complaint and gave the plaintiff 28 days to amend. He also limited the filing to “forty pages, excluding only the caption, the signature, and any attachment,” admonishing counsel that “Although lawyers receive a modicum of expressive latitude in pleading the claim of a client, the complaint in this action extends far beyond the outer bound of that latitude.” So if Trump wants to pursue this case, Brito, Paltzik, and Epstein are going to have to axe about 40 pages of Baghdad Bob-level sycophancy.

How can the president make his case without including the 2024 electoral map and his appearance on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air in 1994?

Lawyering is hard, y’all.