Trump’s Harvard move reflects one of his go-to tactics: Lawsuits
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump played many roles. Real estate developer. The marketing is phenomenal. Reality TV host. Applicant. President – twice.
There is one more part that is constant in all of them: The plaintiff.
Trump both threatens to file lawsuits against individuals and institutions and files them with confidence. Even the people who choose it. Sometimes threats are just that and no lawsuit materializes. And of course, Trump found himself facing many lawsuits and legal challenges. But his combative tendencies date back decades and continued throughout his time in the White House.
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks once described Trump as “the mastermind of a strategic abuse of the judicial process.” In the short-lived 2022-23 Trump lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, Middlebrooks declared that Trump was a “sophisticated plaintiff who has repeatedly used the courts to seek revenge.”
The president has the latest potential targets. His Department of Justice He is suing Harvard University Shortly after Trump objected to a report in the New York Times fight with schooland recently threatened Trevor Noah, the comedian who linked Trump to Jeffrey Epstein During the Grammy Awards show.
“Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!” Trump attacked Truth Social.
Here are some highlights of Trump’s torts and threats.
1973: Cohn, young Trump, segregation and the feds
Trump started his father’s Queens-based real estate business. They came to the attention of state and federal government officials in the early 1970s after potential Black tenants complained about being denied apartments.
Eventually, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged the Trumps with violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968. According to Trump biographer Maggie Haberman, at one point investigators counted seven Black families in 3,700 apartments in Trump Village, and a Trump employee later testified that the documents contained a special code to flag Black applicants.
Trump investigated the matter. With the help of his lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn, he sued the federal government for $100 million in 1973; this is equivalent to approximately $700 million today.
They eventually settled the dispute, but not until 1975, after 18 months of making headlines in the New York media for opposing the government’s case. Trump promised not to discriminate against prospective tenants in the future, but the consent decree he signed contained no admission that he had violated the law.
“I’d rather fight than fold, because once you fold, you get the reputation of being a binder,” Trump recounted in his 1987 ghost-written book “Art of the Deal.”
Stubborn NYC tenants and Trump’s loss
Trump wanted to evict rent-controlled tenants from 100 Central Park South so he could raze the building in the early 1980s. They fought with him, and in 1985 he sued the tenants’ lawyers for $105 million (more than $300 million today). The case was dismissed and Trump paid the defendants’ attorney fees.
Attorney Martin London represented Rick Fischbein, one of the defendant’s lawyers, and wrote in his memoirs that Fischbein framed the check he received from Trump after it was deposited in the bank. Fischbein later became one of Trump’s lawyers.
Trump eventually dropped the eviction lawsuit, redeveloped the building, and allowed tenants to remain there under rent control agreements.
The skyscraper of the 1980s that never existed
During the same period, Trump proposed a 150-story project on the tip of Manhattan. A Chicago Tribune critic said, Paul Gapphe derided it as “Guinness Book of World Records architecture” and “one of the stupidest things anyone could do to New York or any other city.”
Trump sued the Pulitzer Prize winner and Tribune Co. for $500 million (about $1.5 billion today), saying Gapp’s evaluation killed the project.
A federal court dismissed the case.
Net worth fight before politics
In 2005, a decade before Trump launched his presidential bid and as his television career was flourishing on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” author Timothy O’Brien wrote “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.”
The book claimed that Trump was not actually a billionaire and was worth between $150 and $250 million. Trump sued O’Brien, saying he harmed his ability to make business deals, and sought $5 billion (now more than $8 billion). The New Jersey court dismissed the case, and the appeals court agreed.
2016 elections and ‘R
US hoax
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the presidency in 2016. That didn’t stop him from making Hillary Clinton his chief client, along with many others. 2022 case He claimed that there was a big conspiracy that would cost him the election.
This was part of Trump’s pushback against the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s role in the campaign. The investigation concluded that Russia “broadly and systematically” interfered with U.S. political discourse to help Trump and harm Clinton. However, the Ministry of Justice stopped saying this Whether Trump was involved. Trump was not explicitly exonerated in the final report, but he still used it to claim that the “Russia hoax” was a deliberate conspiracy against him.
Middlebrooks, the Florida-based judge who heard the Trump-Clinton case, disagreed, threw out Trump’s lawsuit, and ordered Trump to pay the defendants’ attorney fees, which combined with him making millions.
“This lawsuit should never have been filed,” Middlebrooks wrote scathingly January 2023 order. “The continued abuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law.”
Suing and threatening networks
Since becoming president, Trump has signed two deals for the presidential library after suing major television news networks.
ABC News Agreement reached in 2024 He will pay $15 million to Trump’s future library and $1 million in attorney fees after host George Stephanopoulos made a legally false on-air claim that Trump was found legally liable for raping the author E. Jean Carroll. In fact, a New York jury found that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s but concluded that Trump did not prove that he raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Code.”
Paramount owns CBS Agreed with Trump in 2025 He sued “60 Minutes” over its editing of an interview he conducted with Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million for Trump’s future presidential library.
Trump referenced these cases in his threat to sue Noah. He followed this up a day later with a threat to take $1 billion from Harvard. HE pushed before will receive $500 million from the school for other educational programs.
His biggest request is from taxpayers
Trump upended presidential tradition by never releasing his tax returns. But after he became president, The New York Times and ProPublica published stories detailing how Trump paid little or no federal income tax after claiming significant losses.
Former Internal Revenue Service contractor in 2024 Charles Edward LittlejohnA native of Washington, D.C., who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security technology firm, was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty. Trump’s tax information leaked To news organizations between 2018 and 2020.
Trump did not sue media outlets in response. Instead he sue the IRS For 10 billion dollars.
It’s the largest claim plaintiff Trump has made to date, and if he were successful, US taxpayers would pay the damages.
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