From yesterday's decision by Florida trial court judge Hunter Carroll in Trump Media & Tech. Group Corp. v. Guardian News & Media Ltd.:
This action arises from the publication of several articles reporting on a federal criminal investigation related to TMTG's receipt of two payments totaling $8 million. On March 15 and March 17, 2023, the Guardian published two articles stating federal prosecutors in New York were conducting a money laundering investigation related to the payments, which were wired through the Caribbean from Paxum Bank and ES Family Trust, entities with ties to an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin and a history of providing banking services to the sex worker industry. The articles report [TMTG co-founder Will] Wilkerson's statements that the origins of the loans caused alarm at TMTG and TMTG's then CFO weighed returning the money, but the money was ultimately not returned….
The Guardian articles were reported on by others. On March 15 and March 22, Penske published two articles in Variety that reported federal prosecutors investigated TMTG for potential money laundering violations related to the payments. On March 18, [Defendant Chris] Anderson published an article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that stated federal prosecutors were reportedly investigating the payments to TMTG. The Variety articles and the Herald-Tribune article explicitly reference and provide direct links to the Guardian articles as the source for the statements at issue.
TMTG alleges the articles published by the Defendants are false and defamatory because TMTG "is not, and never was, under investigation for money laundering," and neither TMTG nor its executives have "been the focus of any investigation." …
Count 1 purports to state a claim for defamation and defamation per se based on seven allegedly false statements published in the Guardian articles:
