A Judge Tossed Out Donald Trump's $5 Billion Lawsuit Over Supposed Fake News About His Fortune

Highlights

• Donald Trump sued the author for $5 billion for downplaying his wealth in a book.
• The court threw out the lawsuit, but it doesn't mean the author's reporting was deemed accurate.
• Trump's own statement about fluctuating net worth is used by detractors to question his wealth.

From the moment that Donald Trump first rose to fame, two things have been very clear about him. First off, Trump loves attention, which is why he enjoyed making so many movie cameos. Secondly, Trump has always loved to talk about how rich he is and things like how much he spent on renovating Mar-a-Lago.

Since Trump loves being known as rich and famous, he has always been deeply upset when people downplay how rich he is. However, it is amazing to learn that when one writer claimed Trump was a lot less wealthy than he tells people, the former President sued them for $5 billion.

Donald Trump Sued An Author For $5 Billion For Downplaying His Wealth

In 2005, an author named Timothy L. O'Brien released a book titled "TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald". While Trump often seems to believe that all publicity is good publicity, it certainly seems clear he didn't feel that way about this book. After all, he sued O'Brien for $5 billion over his book.

From the moment that Trump rose to fame, there has been a lot of discussion about how rich Trump really is.

How rich is Donald Trump?

These days, the biggest financial publications report that Trump is worth more than $2 billion. However, when O'Brien released "TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald" in 2005, he estimated that Trump was worth between $150 million and $250 million.

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When O'Brien released his book with that estimate, he had to know that would outrage Trump. In fact, since O'Brien wrote about Trump's past behavior, he should have anticipated that he may need to defend himself against the business leader in court.

That said, it seems all but certain that nobody would have anticipated how much money Trump wound up suing the author for. In 2009, Trump sued O'Brien for defamation, and he asked for a staggering sum of $5 billion.

Unfortunately for Trump, a judge ultimately threw out his $5 billion lawsuit. That said, it is important to note that the court throwing out the lawsuit doesn't mean that they deemed O'Brien's reporting on Trump's fortune to be accurate.

Instead, the court revealed in a ruling that they couldn't find that O'Brien acted with malice while writing about Trump's fortune.

“There were no significant internal inconsistencies in the information provided by the confidential sources, nor was there ‘reliable’ information that contradicted their reports, so as to provide evidence of actual malice. Nothing suggests that O’Brien was subjectively aware of the falsity of his source’s figures or that he had actual doubts as to the information’s accuracy.”

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While Trump had to be upset to have his lawsuit thrown out, things got worse from there. The reason for that is a relic from Trump's failed lawsuit against O'Brien has since been consistently used against the former President by his detractors.

Even now that it has been close to two decades since O'Brien published his book, there is still a lot of debate over how rich Trump is. In many cases, that is because Trump's detractors routinely argue that Trump isn't as wealthy as he or publications like Forbes claim.

Of course, it is nothing new for people to claim that the leaders of opposing political parties are liars. That said, Trump's detractors use a statement that the former President made during the legal process over his lawsuit against O'Brien against him.

As a result of his lawsuit against O'Brien, Trump wound up taking part in a deposition. While O'Brien's team questioned Trump, the former President stated that he raises and lowers his claims about his net worth based on his own feelings. That quote has been routinely wielded to question any reports about Trump's net worth ever since.

Obviously aware that many people question how rich Donald Trump is, Forbes published an article on the subject in December 2022. That piece that backed up claims that Trump is very rich was titled " Yes, Trump Is Still A Billionaire (Even Though He Paid So Little In Taxes) ".

“Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day. Then you have a September 11th, and you don’t feel so good about yourself and you don’t feel so good about the world and you don’t feel so good about New York City. Then you have a year later, and the city is as hot as a pistol. Even months after that it was a different feeling. So yeah, even my own feelings affect my value to myself.”

An Author Was Happy Donald Trump Sued Him For $5 Billion

In the world, millions of people live from check to check, and much worse. For those people, the idea of being sued for billions is crazy to even fathom. After all, even if a court ruled those people owed a fraction of $5 billion, their finances would be destroyed forever. With that in mind, it is wild that an author was happy that Donald Trump sued them for a staggering amount of money.

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In February 2016, The National Review published an article about Trump's history of suing people. For that piece, they spoke to Timothy L. O'Brien about Trump suing him for $5 billion. According to what O'Brien told the publication, he was happy about Trump's eye-catching lawsuit against him.

“I was happy to go to court with him over this one. I felt confident, very confident, about the quality of the work. I don’t begrudge him coming after me as strongly as he wanted. He did, and he lost, and there it is.”

Based on that quote, it may seem like O'Brien hated Trump. After all, it seems like O'Brien would have to hate Trump to be willing to risk a fortune to defeat him in court. However, O'Brien actually spoke to The National Review about what he liked about Trump. O'Brien did go on to call Trump out after that, however.

What are Donald Trump's weirdest lawsuits, according to Fortune?

• Trump sues Julius and Edmond Trump
• Trump sues Merv Griffin
• Trump sues a Miss USA contestant
• Trump sues Ivana Trump
• Trump sues The Chicago Tribune

“This will sound weird, but there are parts of him that I really like. There are parts of him, when you’re with him, that can be very human, very open. He’s essentially a name-caller and a bully and a sort of P. T. Barnum of the modern era. . . . People who are really comfortable with who they are and what they’re worth don’t need to strong-arm people.”

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