It can be hard to keep track of President Trump’s many lawsuits against major media companies, but one was the $475 million suit he filed in 2022 against CNN. That suit alleged that the cable news network had defamed him by calling his claims about the 2020 election a “big lie.” Also part of the suit was that CNN had “hosted” guests who compared the president to Hitler.
Per Bloomberg News, the suit was dismissed in 2023 by a Trump-appointed judge, who found that while some of the terminology was “repugnant,” it “was not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”
“This case involves political speech of the highest order,” US District Judge Raag Singhal wrote in the 2023 opinion. “The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for public office.” Another panel upheld that ruling in 2025.
Now, the president is appealing to the Supreme Court to revive the suit.
Bloomberg: Trump Will Ask Supreme Court to Revive $475 Million CNN Suit
President Trump told the US Supreme Court he intends to ask the justices to revive his $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN over use of the term “Big Lie” in reporting on his claim that the 2020…
— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) June 8, 2026
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“Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court for a 60-day extension to Aug. 15 to file his petition for review of a lower court’s dismissal of the case, according to a request that was formally docketed by the justices on Friday,” Bloomberg reported. “The filing, the first sign that Trump would seek to revive the suit, indicated his appeal would double down on his claims about the 2020 election.”
“In reality, President Trump was lawfully pursuing then-unresolved, and now proven, claims about election irregularities in the 2020 presidential election,” Trump’s attorney claimed in the filing, per Bloomberg.
It is quite a large stretch, of course, to describe claims about election fraud in 2020 as “now proven.” And CNN is likely to soon end up in the hands of Trump-aligned billionaire David Ellison.
“The planned appeal comes as Trump continues pursuing several other high-profile legal actions against news organizations. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has filed defamation lawsuits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC, among others,” The Desk reported.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
