Trump campaign manager sues Daily Beast over stories on how much he earned

The co-manager of US President Donald Trump's successful 2024 campaign has sued the Daily Beast for defamation over stories regarding how much he was paid for his work.

The lawsuit on behalf of Chris LaCivita said the online publication's stories that he was paid $22 million over two years -- later corrected to $19.2 million -- created the false impression that LaCivita was personally profiting excessively from his work for the campaign and that he was prioritising personal gain over the campaign's success".

The Daily Beast said it stood by its reporting, calling the lawsuit "meritless and a transparent attempt to intimidate the Beast and silence the independent press".

 

Celebrity attorney Mark Geragos is representing LaCivita in the lawsuit, filed in the US District Court in Richmond, Virginia. The filing was first reported by Axios.

The case continues a trend of aggressive action taken against the news media by Trump and those in his orbit. Trump has sued CBS News for $20 billion over editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris, and sued the Des Moines Register over an Iowa election poll that turned out to be inaccurate.

ABC News settled a lawsuit with Trump over its incorrect claim that the president had been found civilly liable for raping writer E Jean Carroll.

LaCivita, in his lawsuit, said the majority of the money paid by Trump to him and his firm, Advancing Strategies LLC, was to buy media ads. He alleged that the stories created a negative perception for him and his firm and hindered the ability to attract new clients.

In a letter to Geragos last month, the Daily Beast said it would request that Trump and several of his aides be made available for the discovery process.

The company's lawyer, Neil Rosenhouse, disputed the idea that LaCivita's business had been hurt.

The Beast's reporting that the LLC earned millions of dollars by successfully managing President Trump's campaign is not defamatory. It is the opposite," he wrote.