But originally, you know, under American law, constitutional law, the president is entitled to immunity from civil lawsuits under law developed by the Supreme Court, not based in a statute, not based in the Constitution.
So to the extent that the president is engaged in conduct that falls within what the court describes as the outer perimeter of his official duties, Trump is immune from civil lawsuits for damages.
However, Trump is free to go around and sue people himself.
Now, this is not something we have seen from prior presidents, but Trump is sort of unique in his litigiousness.
So we have this sort of asymmetric dynamic where if somebody now reports on a story that concerns him and he does not like it, which is what happened with the Wall Street Journal's story on the alleged letter that he sent to Jeffrey Epstein in this book, then he is free to go out and sue them as he has done for defamation.
But at the same time, if you or I wanted to sue him for similar, sort of concerning the same facts for whatever reason, we'd probably be precluded from doing so.
Even the Wall Street Journal, if it wanted to bring a counterclaim against Trump in this lawsuit for defamation, because of the way in which he's denied it, maybe alleging that it's fake and that may have concocted it, it's not clear that they would be able to assert a defamation claim against him because of his immunity.
And his claim, his argument would be, which he's asserted before, that he's sort of free to respond to critics on matters of public concern, and that falls within his presidential zone of duty.
So this is how he approached the E.G. and Carroll case.
It's how he's approached the January 6th civil lawsuits against him.
Those lawsuits have moved forward despite this defense, but they went through years of litigation on just this issue.
So the standard is he has to prove that the Wall Street Journal defamed him with actual malice.
And for a public official, that means either they knew that it was the reporting was false or they acted recklessly with regard to their reporting, meaning they had some reason, substantial reason to believe it was false, but they proceeded nonetheless.
So that's just sort of the broad contours of what he needs to establish.
That I think is going to be very difficult in this case because I think the, I would assume that the journal spent a lot of time and careful thought that went into its reporting and that they involved lawyers as well because of Trump's litigiousness.
The prospect that he faces if this case actually proceeds, the journal could get it dismissed.
We'll see.
I'm sure they'll move to dismiss the case.
But if it proceeds to discovery, Trump will then be exposed to civil discovery like any other plaintiff.
That would include requests for, I would think, extensive documents from the Wall Street Journal, both from his private and public archives, so to speak.
And they will want to depose him under oath, not just about the letter at issue and whether or not he wrote it, but about his broader relationship with Epstein going back decades, because that relationship is probative of his credibility on the denial, right?
And it goes to his motive to potentially falsely deny that he wrote the note.
So you would expect a very aggressive deposition from them.
And those depositions have typically not gone well for Trump in the past.
You may remember he was deposed by E.G. and Carroll's lawyers in that civil lawsuit, and a lot of very unpleasant clips emerged from that, some of which were used against him.
So he faces a real risk of a messy discovery process, assuming the case goes forward.
You know, I think the Wall Street Journal has a pretty good shot at getting it dismissed because I think it's not a very strong case on its face.
If it does not get dismissed, it's possible the journal will settle the case with him as we've seen other media companies settle cases.
I doubt that they are prepared to settle this.
I would assume that when they published this story, they were prepared for a lawsuit, prepared to proceed without settling the case.
It is also possible that Trump at some point could voluntarily dismiss the case.
And he has done that before, for instance, in a case of a lawsuit he filed against Michael Cohen when that case was approaching discovery and when he was on deck for a deposition.
He voluntarily dismissed the case.
So we have seen in the past when he's exposed to discovery that may be unflattering or unpleasant for him personally, he just sort of quietly dismisses the case.
I would not be surprised if we saw that here, but it's among the options.
He generally loses these cases when they actually proceed to a judicial resolution.
The exceptions, which have gotten a lot of attention, understandably in recent months, are these settlements that he's gotten, one with ABC News and the other with Paramount Global, which is the parent company of CBS.
And those are the exceptions rather than the rule.
They've attracted a lot of attention, understandably, but they're outliers.
When he sues a media company based on its reporting, sort of rigorous reporting, and that is a credible media company, as of course, the Wall Street Journal is, he tends to lose.
Oh, so I was a federal prosecutor for about three and a half years.
From summer of 2016 to early 2020, I was based here in Washington, D.C., and I was specialized in white-collar crime and financial fraud, cases that concerned people throughout the country and potentially international cases.
I was not in the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C.
I was in a specialized unit within Maine Justices that focuses just on large, complex financial fraud cases.
How I came to journalism is sort of an interesting little story.
I mean, I left the Trump administration in January 2020.
I left the Justice Department, I should say, under the first Trump administration in January 2020.
Long story short, I was not pleased with how the Justice Department was being run within my office under the management that had emerged under the Trump administration.
And then in January 2020, we're close to the pandemic.
So at that time, I was sort of taking a break.
And then the pandemic came along.
And so, like many other people, it was like, well, what's the point of looking for a job at this point?
We may not need any money.
We may be bartering for goods and services.
It could be like a walking dead type situation.
So I didn't know what was going to happen.
So I wasn't looking for work, but I was writing to sort of pass the time.
And I got very lucky.
People were supportive and picking things up that I was writing.
So I was a contributor at Politico doing kind of freelance alongside a columnized writing for New York Magazine for a couple of years.
I came on full-time last March, so a little over a year.
So yes, if the conduct concerns his official duties or the conduct that falls within the outside of perimeter of his official duties, it would apply to conduct that occurred while he was in office, both on the civil side and the criminal side of liability.
Because you take a look at this particular story, right?
The Wall Street Journal story.
It is, of course, a personal matter to him because he knew Jeffrey Epstein personally, and Trump is very concerned, I would say, about the extent of his personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
But that personal relationship now has political implications, right?
Because the Trump administration, not just Trump himself, but the vice president, the Attorney General, the FBI director, and the FBI deputy director all spent years cultivating these Epstein conspiracy theories as part of a political process that is now playing out in the current administration.
So we've seen the public and the private, the political and the private, sort of merge under Trump.
So now for him, he views this as a personal matter that he can sue about, but it's also a very political hot topic, one that's very, very important to many Americans.
So effectively, he's in a position where he can file a lawsuit that is looking to essentially squelch reporting on a matter of public concern.