Donald Trump has amended his defamation lawsuit against, cutting the filing to 62 pages while keeping his demand for $15 billion in damages. The new complaint replaces an 85-page original that Judge Stephen Merryday struck on his own for failing to meet Rule 8.
The filing matters now because it shows Trump is not backing away from the case even after the first version was removed from consideration. Alejandro Brito drafted that original complaint, and the judge said it was “unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8,” a rare judicial rebuke that forced the case back to square one before the amended version could be put in place.
Trump’s latest complaint again targets reporting tied to Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, saying they purposefully avoided the truth by failing to independently verify whether the documents provided by Charles Littlejohn were legitimate, accurate copies of President Trump’s tax returns. It also says Littlejohn was charged on September 29, 2023, with unlawfully stealing and disclosing those returns, a detail the filing uses to bolster the claim that the material behind the reporting was stolen.
But the amended complaint also creates its own problem. It argues that the reporting was defamatory because it said Trump’s desk showed no signs of real work, while also saying his desk had no computer, contracts or files and was covered with newspaper and magazine articles focused on himself. That leaves the lawsuit walking a fine line: it attacks the reporting as false while describing a scene that still sounds barren enough to support the same impression it is trying to undo.
The new filing also stays in tension with Trump’s own separate claims against the IRS seeking billions in recompense for Littlejohn’s disclosure. In one case, he is asking a court to treat the leaked tax returns as part of an unlawful theft; in the other, he is arguing that the reporting built on those documents was defamatory because the reporters did not do enough to verify them. What comes next is whether will challenge the amended complaint on the same ground that sank the first one, or whether the case finally reaches the substance of what Trump says was false.
