Donald Trump amended his Trump defamation lawsuit New York Times case, filing a 62-page complaint that still seeks $15 billion in damages. The revised pleading comes after Judge Stephen Merryday rejected the earlier version, forcing Trump’s legal team to tighten the case before pressing the same demand.
Judge Stephen Merryday and Rule 8
Judge Merryday struck the original 85-page complaint sua sponte for standing “unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” That left Trump with a narrower filing and the same burden of explaining why the case belongs in court in its revised form.
The change in length is one of the few concrete differences available from the filing itself. The amended complaint remains a high-dollar defamation claim, but the reduction from 85 pages to 62 suggests Trump’s lawyers cut material after the first version was rejected.
Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner
The new complaint says Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner “purposefully avoided the truth by failing to independently verify whether the documents that Charles Littlejohn provided them with, and upon which they relied for the challenged statements in the Book, were legitimate, accurate copies of President Trump’s tax returns.” The filing also says it is defamatory to report that “Trump’s desk showed no signs of real work—no computer, contracts, or files. It was just smothered by newspaper and magazine articles focused on one subject: himself.”
Those allegations show the amended case is built around both the reporting and the source of the tax records. Trump’s complaint ties the challenged statements to the documents Littlejohn provided and to the way Craig and Buettner used them.
Charles Littlejohn and the IRS
The complaint also says Littlejohn was charged with unlawfully stealing and disclosing President Trump’s tax returns on September 29, 2023. In the same dispute, Trump filed a lawsuit against the IRS seeking billions of dollars in recompense for Littlejohn’s unlawful disclosure.
That overlap matters because the amended complaint does not rely only on the reporters’ work; it also points back to the source of the records and Trump’s separate fight with the IRS. Whether the leaked tax returns were legitimate copies or fakes is not answered in the filing, and the next step will come from the court handling Trump v. NY Times.
