President Donald Trump is angling to force the Wall Street Journal's parent company to pay out a settlement without even going to trial in his lawsuit over the new explosive reporting about his alleged lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, legal expert Lisa Rubin told MSNBC's Antonia Hylton on Friday.
"If his defamation case were to go that far, Donald Trump would have to sit for a deposition, exchange materials," said Rubin. "But of course, Donald Trump is counting on it never going that far, because in the two lawsuits that he's filed to date against other media organizations, he has extracted settlements from them well before those things could ever happen."
"So you think his hope here is basically that the Wall Street Journal's parent company is like, we want this to go away and we'll pay for it to get out of our face," said Hylton.
"Yes," agreed Rubin. "I mean, I think the Wall Street Journal's parent companies will first try ... to move to dismiss on legal grounds, to say that whatever Donald Trump's complaint says against them doesn't even meet the legal framework for a defamation claim."
"Now, we haven't seen that complaint yet. It hasn't been filed," Rubin continued. "All we know is that a docket has been created, meaning a case has been created online that he has sued five entities or individuals, and that the case is described online as being a defamation case. Beyond that, we don't even know who represents Donald Trump right now on the docket, he's described as pro se, which is the legal term for someone who represents themselves. Clearly, Donald Trump is not representing himself in this case."
"So there's a lot we still have to learn about Donald Trump's defamation case against the Wall Street Journal, its reporters and Rupert Murdoch," she added. "But by naming Murdoch himself as a defendant, I think that's sign number one that he's hoping for a settlement."
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