Judge Rejects Trump's Defamation Suit Against the New York Times for Procedural Reasons, Trump Attorneys Will Refile

JUST IN: A federal judge has tossed President Trump's $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and Penguin Random House, calling the complaint "decidedly improper and impermissible."

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… U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday on Friday struck the complaint and gave the president's lawyers 28 days to refile their lawsuit.

"A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers' Corner," Merryday wrote.

Judge Merryday, in a blistering four-page ruling, said he was throwing out the suit because it "unmistakably and inexcusably" violates the rules that govern civil lawsuits.

"A complaint is a short, plain, direct statement of allegations of fact sufficient to create a facially plausible claim for relief and sufficient to permit the formulation of an informed response," he wrote. "Although lawyers receive a modicum of expressive latitude in pleading the claim of a client, the complaint in this action extends far beyond the outer bound of that latitude."

In tossing the suit because Trump's complaint was procedurally improper, the judge did not weigh in on the merits of Trump's defamation claim, giving his lawyers 28 days to refile it in a "professional and dignified manner."

Merryday, who was appointed by President Geroge H. W. Bush, said the complaint contains eighty pages of repetitive claims and praise for President Trump, but fails to establish the two counts of defamation alleged. He lambasted Trump's lawyers for forcing him to "labor through" the "superfluous" praise about Trump's show "The Apprentice," as well as the size of his real estate empire and the "historic fashion" of Trump's 2024 presidential victory.

"Even assuming that each allegation in the complaint is true ... a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader's claim for relief," the judge wrote. "As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective -- not a protected platform to rage against an adversary."