(USA Features) After his campaign filed a libel lawsuit against The New York Times earlier this week, President Donald Trump said Wednesday that more legal action is forthcoming.
The suit accuses the paper of knowingly publishing a false story claiming Russia was backing his first campaign.
The the Times was “well aware” it published false information about collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“They did a bad thing,” Trump said of the Times when asked about it Wednesday. “And there will be more coming,” he promised, as reported by .
He did not elaborate.
“If you read it, you will see that it is much more than opinion,” Trump added in defending the suit. “It is beyond an opinion.”
The lawsuit stems from an article published March 27, 2019, by former Times executive editor Max Frankel.
The piece, titled, “,” was published in the Times’ “opinion” section, but posits that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help beat 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “for a new pro-Russian foreign policy.”
No evidence has ever been presented to substantiate the allegation. And former special counsel Robert Mueller concluded in a report in 2018 following an investigation into the allegations that no such evidence was found.
The Trump campaign claims the Times “knowingly published false and defamatory statements” about the campaign having an “overarching deal” with Russian President “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy” to “help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton” in exchange for “a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions.”
“The Defamatory Article does not allege or refer to any proof of its claims of a ‘quid pro quo’ or ‘deal’ between the Campaign and Russia,” the complaint reads. “Rather, the Defamatory Article selectively refers to previously-reported contacts between a Russian lawyer and persons connected with the Campaign.”
“The Defamatory Article, however, insinuates that these contacts must have resulted in a quid pro quo or a deal, and the Defamatory Article does not acknowledge that, in fact, there had been extensive reporting, including in The Times, that the meetings and contacts that the Defamatory Article refers to did not result in any quid pro quo or deal between the Campaign and Russia, or anyone connected with either of them,” the suit continues.
“The Times story is false,” it concludes.