Trump: Too busy to be a defendant but plenty of time to sue

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WILMINGTON, Delaware, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Soon after winning reelection in November 2024, Donald Trump‘s lawyers told a state judge in Delaware that a lawsuit brought against him by two co-founders of his social media company should be put on hold because a sitting president does not have time to deal with civil litigation.

Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, Lori Will, to “recognize a rule of temporary immunity that protects the Presidency from the diversions, distractions and harassment of state civil litigation.” The plaintiffs alleged that they were denied their agreed-upon payout for successfully launching Truth Social.

But before the judge could decide the immunity matter, Trump seemed to undercut his own argument by filing a civil lawsuit of his own against an Iowa newspaper, the Des Moines Register.

Trump, who for decades has used litigation to hit back at critics, subsequently filed at least five more lawsuits in his personal capacity, seeking tens of billions of dollars.

These were defamation suits targeting a book publisher, Penguin Random House, and three news organizations, the New York Times, opens new tab (NYT.N), opens new tab, the Wall Street Journal (NWSA.O), opens new tab and the BBC; a suit accusing a bank, JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), opens new tab, of unlawfully closing his accounts; and a suit accusing the U.S. Internal Revenue Service of unlawfully failing to prevent disclosure of his tax returns to the media.

The media companies and JPMorgan denied wrongdoing. The IRS has not commented on the lawsuit or responded in court.

Ultimately, the Delaware case against Trump was dismissed by Will in September, but not on immunity grounds.

USING TRUMP’S ARGUMENT AGAINST HIM

Some targets of his litigation are trying to use the Republican president’s immunity claim against him, saying if Trump asserts he is too busy to be burdened by responding to litigation brought against him, he should not be allowed to bring lawsuits against others.

“It’s like saying, ‘We’re going to play baseball and only I get to bat,'” University of Michigan School of Law professor Richard Primus said of Trump’s stance on immunity.

The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on presidential immunity from civil litigation in a 1997 ruling involving Democratic then-President Bill Clinton, declaring they are not immune. The justices let a defamation and sexual harassment lawsuit by a former Arkansas state employee named Paula Jones proceed against Clinton.

The Supreme Court in a 2024 ruling involving Trump found that presidents do have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken in office, though that decision did not involve civil litigation.

The latest party in one of the Trump lawsuits to refashion his immunity claim against him is pollster Ann Selzer, who he sued along with the Des Moines Register and its publishers in December 2024 over a preelection poll that had shown his Democratic rival Kamala Harris leading in Iowa, a state that Trump ultimately won.

Selzer sought, unsuccessfully, to have the case put on hold for the duration of Trump’s presidency.

Lawyers for the defendants argued that Trump has a history of misusing the courts for his political agenda, and his immunity claim could give him a new weapon to deploy against the media. Trump could demand private documents and testimony, known as discovery, from the defendants in cases he has filed, but then claim immunity when demands are made on him, they said.