Former President Donald Trump is suing veteran journalist Bob Woodward for allegedly releasing interview tapes without authorization.
Trump’s attorneys filed a $49 million lawsuit against Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, for allegedly exploiting Trump by publishing an audiobook of his interviews with Woodward, according to Bloomberg. (RELATED: ‘I’m More Angry Now’: Trump Kicks Off 2024 Campaign In New Hampshire And South Carolina)
Exclusive: Donald Trump has a new lawsuit target: Bob Woodward. The former president is suing the veteran journalist for releasing interview recordings, claiming he never agreed to the tapes being publichttps://t.co/vNCG89ebU7
— Bloomberg (@business) January 30, 2023
“This case centers on Mr. Woodward’s systematic usurpation, manipulation, and exploitation of audio of President Trump gathered in connection with a series of interviews conducted by Mr. Woodward,” Trump’s team alleges in the complaint filed in a Northeast Florida court.
“Said audio was protected material, subject to various limitations on use and distribution—as a matter of copyright, license, contract, basic principles of the publishing industry, and core values of fairness and consent,” the complaint continues.
The lawsuit says Trump consented to the conversations for a book and did not intend for the interviews to be released as an audio recording. Trump’s team says they contacted the defendants about their concerns to no avail before filing the lawsuit.
Simon & Schuster published “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump” on January 17, 2023, and it’s advertised as an “inside” account of the Trump presidency.
The interviews were originally recorded for Woodward’s 2020 book “Rage” also published by Simon & Schuster. Woodward’s first book about Trump’s presidency, “Fear: Trump in the White House” was published in 2018 and quickly became a bestseller.
Woodward rose to prominence as an investigative journalist for the Washington Post when he conducted original reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. He has written inside accounts of multiple presidential administrations such as the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies.