Former President Donald Trump speaks on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. The rally is being held to support Harriet Hageman, Rep. Liz Cheneys primary challenger in Wyoming.
Chet Strange | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump sued famed journalist Bob Woodward on Monday over the discharge of audio recordings of his interviews with Trump, who claims he never agreed to permit those tapes to be sold to the general public.
Woodward, publisher Simon & Schuster and its parent company, Paramount Global, “unlawfully usurped” Trump’s copyright interests and other rights by publishing an audiobook featuring hours of “raw” audio from Woodward’s many interviews with Trump, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit seeks $50 million or more which it says relies on an estimate that the audiobook, “The Trump Tapes,” sold greater than 2 million copies at $24.99 apiece.
The 31-page criticism, filed in federal court in Pensacola, Florida, alleges that Trump “repeatedly stated to Woodward, within the presence of others, that he was agreeing to be recorded for the only real purpose of Woodward with the ability to write a single book.”
That book, 2021’s “Rage,” failed to copy the success of Woodward’s previous book on the Trump White House, based on the lawsuit. Woodward then “decided to use, usurp, and capitalize upon President Trump’s voice by releasing the Interview Sound Recordings of their interviews with President Trump in the shape of an audiobook,” the criticism alleges.
Simon & Schuster didn’t immediately comment on the lawsuit.
Woodward interviewed Trump over the phone and in person 19 times between December 2019 and August 2020, based on the lawsuit. Woodward and his publisher assembled greater than eight hours of audio from those interviews, plus one other from 2016, for the audiobook, which was released last October “without President Trump’s permission,” the lawsuit says.
Trump “made Woodward aware on multiple occasions, each on and off the record, of the character of the limited license to any recordings, due to this fact retaining for himself the commercialization and all other rights to the narration,” based on the lawsuit.
The criticism also alleges that Trump and his lawyers had previously “confronted” the defendants in regards to the dispute, but they “overtly refused to acknowledge President Trump’s copyright and contractual rights.”
The lawsuit notes that the audio has also been worked into CD, paperback and e-book formats, “all on the expense of President Trump and without accounting to him.”
The lawsuit accused the three defendants of unjust enrichment, and singled out the writer himself on counts of breaching a contract and an “implied covenant of fine faith and fair dealing.”
Trump sued Woodward, who’s one-half of the legendary reporting duo that broke the Nixon-era Watergate scandal, as he ramps up his 2024 presidential campaign. Weeks before he launched his current White House bid, a federal judge dismissed Trump’s sprawling lawsuit against Democratic presidential campaign rival Hillary Clinton and a cadre of former officials, slamming it as a “political manifesto.”