2016 Postmortem

ColemanMaskell

(783 posts) Tue Oct 4, 2016, 02:30 PM Oct 2016

"If Donald Trump Sues The Times Over His Tax Returns, He’ll Probably Lose Badly"

"If Donald Trump Sues The Times Over His Tax Returns, He’ll Probably Lose Badly"

First Amendment experts overwhelmingly say the businessman almost stands no chance in court.
10/04/2016 09:16 am ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-lawsuit-new-york-times_us_57f2486fe4b082aad9bbf04c?section=us_politics

WASHINGTON ― If Donald Trump were to put his money where his mouth is, his lawyers should already be preparing to sue The New York Times over its weekend publication of a 1995 tax return. The document shows him declaring a loss so big, that it suggests his business acumen maybe isn’t as great as he claims.

In that watershed report, one of the GOP presidential nominee’s longtime lawyers, Marc Kasowitz, is on the record warning the newspaper that going public with the tax return would lead to “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action.”

But legal experts with an in-depth knowledge of the First Amendment are highly doubtful Trump stands a chance in the courts ― especially if the Times did its due diligence and didn’t coerce the information from the person who anonymously mailed it to them.

“This is open-and-shut,” said in an email Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who is a leading scholar on freedom-of-the-press issues. “As the Supreme Court made clear in the Pentagon Papers decision, the press cannot be held liable for publishing truthful information that is relevant to the public interest in the absence of a clear and present danger of grave harm.”

The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers pointed to a federal statute that makes it a crime for “any person” who unlawfully receives tax information to publish it. But some have pointed out that the statute only applies to disclosures originating from government officials ― and here it appears to have been made by someone within the Trump organization.