http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/opinion/donald-trump-vs-a-free-press.html 2016-10-14 05:27:45 Donald Trump vs. a Free Press Mr. Trump is wrong to think he can win a lawsuit against The Times for publishing allegations about his groping of women. === It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is as ignorant about constitutional law as he is about every other matter pertinent to the nation’s highest office. Still, The letter charged the article with being “libelous,” “reckless” and “defamatory,” called it a “politically-motivated effort to defeat Mr. Trump’s candidacy” and accused The Times of inadequately investigating the truth of the claims. Similar accounts by other women were published recently in The On Libel claims are based on “the protection of one’s reputation,” Mr. McCraw wrote, and nothing in the published article had the slightest effect on Mr. Trump’s reputation, which Mr. Trump had created by, among other things, repeatedly bragging about touching women without their consent. The Times was well within its rights to publish the story, Mr. McCraw added, because Mr. Trump is a public figure and the issue is one of national importance. And contrary to Mr. Trump’s claims, The Times’s reporters worked to confirm the women’s accounts and printed his denial of the accusations. The Times is, of course, very familiar with threats of litigation by government officials and other public figures who oppose the paper’s reporting on them. It was In his opinion for the court, Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote that “public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.” Such discussion “may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” In Donald Trump’s view, these principles shouldn’t exist. “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” he Of course, Mr. Trump’s threat to sue may be an empty one, as so many of his previous threats — intended mainly to energize his angry base — have been. But it is yet another frightening reminder of what a Trump presidency could bring.