Trump threatens further legal action against news media, Jan. 6 panel

Former President Trump on Monday threatened legal action against various news media outlets and the House select committee investigating the Jan 6., 2021, attack on the Capitol on the same day his legal team filed a lawsuit against CNN.

Trump did not specify what other media outlets he plans to sue but said he would file lawsuits against them for their “disinformation” about the 2020 election, which he lost to President Biden.

“In the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a large number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and wrongdoing, including as it pertains to ‘The Big Lie,’ that they used so often in reference to their disinformation attack on Presidential Election of 2020,” Trump wrote in his statement. 

The former president said he would target the Jan 6. committee for not investigating his claims of election fraud, which were at the center of dozens of lawsuits by Trump in courts across the U.S., all of which were dropped or dismissed, some by judges he appointed.

“The Unselect Committee has refused to acknowledge, as was done by the Biden Inspector General at the Department of Defense, and others, that days ahead of January 6th, I recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout the Country,” Trump added. 

Biden had not yet been sworn in as president in the days leading up to Jan. 6. There is also no evidence that Trump ordered any extra security at the Capitol in anticipation of violence there on that day.

In the lawsuit filed against CNN on Monday, Trump’s attorneys claimed the network “has sought to use its massive influence — purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source — to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically, culminating in CNN claiming credit for ‘[getting] Trump out’ in the 2020 presidential election.”

Trump is seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

Trump announced his intent to sue the network earlier this summer, saying in a statement he would “also be commencing actions against other media outlets who have defamed me and defrauded the public regarding the overwhelming evidence of fraud throughout the 2020 Election.”