Donald Trump is a libel bully. And a loser.

According to the American Bar Association anyway.

The ABA commissioned a group of attorneys to examine Trump's track record of filing lawsuits against his public critics. The report's opening line: "Donald J. Trump is a libel bully. Like most bullies, he's also a loser, to borrow from Trump's vocabulary."

Alas the ABA was too concerned about a lawsuit from the Trumpet to publish the report, however it can be found here (direct PDF link)

It goes on say that while Trump has been involved in a "mind-boggling 4,000 lawsuits" and "countless" cease-and-desist letters, he has "never won a single speech-related case filed in a public court." One of the examples cited is Trump's suit against Bill Maher after Maher challenged Trump to produce his birth certificate to prove he was not the son of an orangutan. That "frivolous" lawsuit was withdrawn, say the authors.

Further highlights.

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Donald J. Trump is a libel bully. Like most bullies, he's also a loser, to borrow from Trump's vocabulary. Trump and his companies have been involved in a mind-boggling 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years and sent countless threatening cease-and-desist letters to journalists and critics. But the GOP presidential nominee and his companies have never won a single speech-related case filed in a public court. This article examines seven speech-related cases brought by Trump and his companies, which include four dismissals on the merits, two voluntary withdrawals, and one lone victory in an arbitration won by default. Media defense lawyers would do well to remind Trump of his sorry record in speech-related cases filed in public courts when responding to bullying libel cease-and-desist letters. Trump's lawsuits are worthy of a comedy routine, as when Trump sued HBO comedian Bill Maher for suckering Trump into sending his birth certificate to prove he was not the "spawn" of an orangutan, and Trump hit back with a $5-million breach-of-contract lawsuit, only to withdraw it after the Hollywood Reporter ridiculed it. Can anyone say Hustler v. Falwell? Orangutans and joking aside, this examination of Trump's libel losses also provides a powerful illustration of why more states need to enact anti-SLAPP laws to discourage libel bullies like Trump from filing frivolous lawsuits to chill speech about matters of public concern and run up legal tabs for journalists and critics.

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Trump filed his first and crankiest libel lawsuit in 1984 against the Chicago Tribune and the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, Paul Gapp. Trump filed his libel lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. Trump claimed he suffered $500 million in damages. Gapp, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1979, dared to publish a "Design" column in the Sunday Tribune Magazine on August 12, 1984 ridiculing Trump's proposal to build the tallest building in the world: a 150-story, nearly 2,000-foot tall skyscraper on a landfill at the southeast end of Manhattan.

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Trump's next big libel lawsuit was filed in New Jersey state court more than 20 years later. This time, Trump alleged a whopping $5 billion in damages in his 2006 libel lawsuit against book author Timothy O'Brien and his book publishers, Time Warner Book Group, Inc. and Warner Books, Inc. Trump's lawsuit claimed that O'Brien's 2005 book, TrumpNation, The Art of Being The Donald, falsely reported that Trump was "only" worth between $150 million to $250 million, nowhere near the net worth claimed by Trump, which ranged from $4 billion to $5 billion to $6 billion to $9.5 billion. Trump sued for libel, claiming he was really, really worth billions of dollars.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2dJfYJF