Amicus: Why Donald Trump Sues Everyone

Slate Crime and Justice

In the first in a new series, The Law According to Trump, Amicus begins an extensive exploration of Donald Trump's tumultuous relationship with the courts and legal system, focusing on Trump's use of lawyers and lawsuits to enhance his brand, wealth, and power. In the past few months, attention has rightly been on several blockbuster federal cases involving former President Trump, all the way up to and including his immunity case at the Supreme Court, but Trump’s history with the law goes back much further and is much broader than the election subversion cases.

While Dahlia Lithwick takes a well-deserved break, Amicus is very lucky to have award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein in the host chair. Andrea has covered five trials against Trump or his company for NPR, is the author of American Oligarchs: the Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power, and she has also hosted three podcasts that touch on Trump and the law, including, most recently “We Don’t Talk About Leonard.”

This episode delves into Trump's history of litigation with a close eye on how he has used nuisance lawsuits. Slate’s jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl joins Andrea to outline the many people and organizations the former President has sued since leaving office. Then, former US Attorney Jim Zirin, author of Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits, fills us in on the history of Trump’s love of litigation.

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