Former President Donald Trump is suing journalist Bob Woodward for nearly $50 million over the release of audio recordings of an interview between the two.
In the lawsuit filed on Monday, Trump, 76, alleges that he never agreed for 19 taped interviews conducted for Woodward’s 2020 book “Rage” to be included in the audiobook “The Trump Tapes,” published by Simon & Schuster Inc. last year.
“This case centers on Mr. Woodward’s systematic usurpation, manipulation, and exploitation of audio of President Trump gathered in connection with a series of interviews conducted by Mr. Woodward,” Trump’s lawyers said in the 31-page filing.
The lawsuit claims that Woodward decided to compile the recorded Trump interviews into a new audiobook after the publication of “Rage” because his previous Trump book, “Fear,” which was published in 2018, performed poorly. Woodward allegedly did this in an effort “to exploit, usurp, and capitalize” on the taped interviews.
“In publishing Rage, Woodward clearly hoped to replicate the success of Fear, but he failed to do so. Faced with the reality that Rage was a complete and total failure, Woodward decided to exploit, usurp, and capitalize upon President Trump’s voice by releasing the Interview Sound Recordings of their interviews with President Trump in the form of an audiobook,” the suit stated.
“The Defendants’ ongoing concerted efforts to profit off the protected audio recordings and the works they have distributed derived from the protected audio recordings have caused President Trump to sustain substantial damage,” it continued.
The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, seeks more than $49 million in damages and names Simon & Schuster and its parent company, Paramount Global, as defendants along with Woodward.
This comes after Florida Judge Donald Middlebrooks fined Trump and his lawyer nearly $1 million for filing a “revenge” suit against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
On Thursday, Middlebrooks sanctioned Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, accusing them of “using the courts to seek revenge” on adversaries. Both are directed to pay $938,000 to the 18 defendants in the case.
In his opinion, the judge called Trump “a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”
