A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump that attempted to sue Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward for publishing interviews during his first administration in an October 2022 audiobook called “The Trump Tapes.”
According to the court filing, Trump did not demonstrate that he and Woodward intended to be co-authors or that Trump had any copyright interest in his on-the-record responses during the interviews with Woodward.
Trump’s amended complaint “does not plausibly allege that Woodward and Trump intended to be joint authors of The Trump Tapes,” U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe for the Southern District of New York wrote.
The suit also named Woodward’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, and its former parent company, Paramount Global, as defendants. The judge, however, gave Trump the chance to amend and refile his complaint by Aug. 18, though he said it appears “unlikely” that Trump could “adequately plead a plausible copyright interest.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Lawyers for Woodward did not respond to a request for comment.
Woodward, a longtime investigative journalist and a lead reporter who uncovered the Watergate scandal at The Post, had conducted several interviews and audio recordings with Trump during the final year of his first term.
The recordings were the foundation of his book “Rage,” his second book in a trilogy on Trump’s presidency, and published in September 2021. The print telling unveiled Trump’s responses to several crises, including his impeachment trial, his efforts to downplay the severity of the deadly coronavirus pandemic and escalating tensions with North Korea. Those interviews served as the basis for the audiobook.
In 2023, Trump sued Woodward for almost $50 million, claiming in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida that he owned the copyright to the 20 interviews and that they were recorded “for the sole purpose of Woodward being able to write a single book.” Lawyers for Woodward and the publishing company have long rejected Trump’s assertion, and in a joint statement in 2023, argued the suit was “without merit.”
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