Trump Threatens To Sue Reporters Who Exposed His Corruption

A recent story by ProPublica revealed that Donald Trump, through his company and his campaign, paid huge sums of money and granted enormous favors to individuals that have been called to either testify against him in court or that have been subpoenaed for information relating to his criminal trials. ProPublica never said that these payments were bribes or even accused Trump of breaking the law, but the former President is threatening to sue the publication anyway. This is what will happen if Trump gets back into office, as Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

If you wanna get a glimpse of what Donald Trump is going to do with regards to his so-called Revenge Agenda, if he ever makes it back into office, consider this couple weeks ago, maybe even over a month at this point, the nonprofit journalism organization, ProPublica, put out a story, a well-researched story that did not make any accusations, by the way, against Donald Trump. And yes, that is important to the story. But anyway, they put out this great story detailing how the Trump campaign and the Trump organization have rewarded people that have been called to testify or cooperate with law enforcement against him and his many criminal investigations. Let me read you a sampling from the report. The benefits have flowed from Trump's businesses and campaign committees according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aid had his average monthly pay double from 26,000 to $53,500.

Another employee got a $2 million severance package, barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign's top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff where she's now the fourth highest paid employee. And these are individuals who, of course had either been subpoenaed or had been called to testify as witnesses in cases against Donald Trump. And again, ProPublica did not say that Donald Trump did this to tamper with the witness or to buy their loyalty. They just pointed out that, hey, there's some weird coincidences here of people called to testify against Donald Trump suddenly getting lots of money from Donald Trump. That's it. Like that was the extent of their allegations is that, hey, this is odd. Donald Trump's legal team is threatening to sue them. ProPublica revealed it on Twitter this week saying, Trump's attorney sent ProPublica a cease and desist letter demanding this article not be published.

It warned that if the outlet and its reporters continue their reckless campaign of defamation, president Trump will evaluate all legal remedies. In other words, Trump and his people are now threatening to sue ProPublica for exposing potential corruption through his businesses and campaigns, right? This is a smear effort on behalf of Trump and his legal team to attack an independent journalistic organization that did not make any accusations against him. They're a nonprofit. They cannot take a side. All they said was, Hey, here is what we found based on public records. Nothing they said was untrue. And again, because they didn't throw in any opinions or accusations, you can't prove any kind of bias. You cannot sue them, in other words. But the threat of the lawsuit, of course, is what matters. They hope that this threat of the lawsuit will be enough to get these people to pull this story. And

As I mentioned at the beginning of this segment, this is what Trump will do if he gets back into the White House. Anyone out there that is reporting negative stuff about Donald Trump stuff that he doesn't like, you're gonna be threatened with lawsuits. Except this time it's not gonna come from private Donald Trump attorneys. This time. It'll be coming from the Department of Justice itself. You'll be receiving those official letters. You will be threatened with lawsuits till the end of your days if you report on Donald Trump's corruption. That is what this is about. This is just an appetizer. He's just giving us a tiny taste of what is to come in his revenge agenda. If he ever makes it back to the White House, journalism itself will be attacked under Donald Trump. He's already attacked the media relentlessly ever since he first burst onto the scene, and this is the logical next step because it's no longer enough for him to just attack the media. Now he wants his retribution and he wants to quite literally make them pay for it.