It’s being described as the New York Times’ ‘Come at me, bro’ moment.
A lawyer representing the New York Times, David McCraw, has issued a firm response to a letter from Donald Trump’s legal team ordering a retraction of an article published this week.
The article contained accusations from two women that Trump had touched them inappropriately and as well as a retraction, Trump’s legal team demanded an apology from The New York Times for publishing it in the first place.
Lawyers representing Trump sent a letter to Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of The New York Times, on Wednesday, stating that the article in question was “reckless” and “defamatory” and that it “constitutes libel per se”.
The letter went onto say that the article was “nothing more than a politically-motivated effort to defeat Trump’s candidacy” and that failure to retract it would leave Trump with “no option but to pursue all available action and remedies”.
Here it is: Trump campaign lawyer sends letter to @nytimes demanding "full and immediate retraction and apology" of article==> pic.twitter.com/yQpk5lgGOB
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) October 13, 2016
If the letter was designed to have The New York Times running scared, it had the opposite effect.
In a letter of their own, written by a lawyer representing the paper, David E. McCraw, they made it clear in no uncertain terms that they weren’t about to give in to Trump’s demands and shed further light on a wider issue in light of the events of recent weeks, the nature of the Presidential candidate’s attitude towards women.
David McCraw, NYT lawyer, responds to Trump’s letter. pic.twitter.com/ziPBCIjkvP
— Sydney Ember (@melbournecoal) October 13, 2016
The last line, in particular, really rammed home the message.
“If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”
Boom.
