Donald Trump is suing Watergate scandal-famous writer Bob Woodward for exposing his interview tapes to the public and alleging that Woodward did not provide him permission to use the tapes for an audiobook.
The former US president filed a lawsuit against Woodward, the publisher Simon & Schuster, and its parent company Paramount Global on Monday for publishing the audio recordings of the conversations that took place between December 2019 and August 2020.
In the complaint, Trump said that he had merely agreed to be taped for a book Woodward was writing, not for a series of interviews. “Rage” by Woodward was released in September 2021.
By publishing the audio recordings in November of last year as an audiobook titled “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump,” the former president said that Woodward and Simon & Schuster Inc. had violated his copyright.
The case, which was filed in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, and is seeking $50 million or more in damages, said that the journalist, the publisher, and its parent business had published an audiobook without Trump’s permission, infringing on his copyright interests and other rights.
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The lawsuit claimed that the amount was based on an estimate that the audiobook sold more than two million copies at a cost of $24.99 each.
In his 31-page complaint, Trump claimed that Woodward heard him repeatedly say that he was consenting to be taped for the sole purpose of Woodward being able to write a single book
(With inputs from agencies)
