One of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign managers is suing the Daily Beast for defamation because the outlet allegedly reported inaccurate information on his salary.
Chris LaCivita accused the Daily Beast of “malicious publication of numerous articles” about him after an article in the outlet from Oct. 2024 claimed he was compensated “$22 million over the course of two years for his role in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign,” according to the lawsuit.
LaCivita and Susie Wiles were the official campaign co-managers for Trump.
LaCivita asserted that the “defamatory reporting created the false impression” that he profited “excessively from his work on the campaign and that he was prioritizing personal gain over the campaign’s success.” The Daily Beast’s misrepresentation caused him to endure “substantial professional and personal damages,” according to the text of the lawsuit. LaCivita claimed that his accurate salary was readily available through “public campaign finance records,” which ran counter to the Daily Beast’s claims. He also accused the publication of failing to give a retraction or correction even after being sent a notice by LaCivita’s counsel to do so.
“Defendant failed to retract or meaningfully correct its false reporting,” read the text of LaCivita’s lawsuit.
“The foregoing allegations, as well as many of the details in the Articles about the payments Mr. LaCivita allegedly received, are categorically false and belied by the publicly available campaign finance records themselves,” noted the lawsuit. “Specifically, these records clearly show that the $22 million figure is the gross spend (the overwhelming majority of which was for ad buys), not the money which Mr. LaCivita personally received, like the Articles falsely claim.”
The Daily Beast claimed the lawsuit’s contents are bogus, and it stood by the original reporting that LaCivita accused of being defamatory, the Associated Press reported. They called the legal matter a “meritless and a transparent attempt to intimidate the Beast and silence the independent press.”
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Previously, the Daily Beast said it would ask for Trump and his aides to be part of the lawsuit’s discovery process, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, Neil Rosenhouse, the lawyer representing the Daily Beast, denied claims that LaCivita’s reputation, business, or finances had suffered due to the article.
“The Beast’s reporting that the LLC earned millions of dollars by successfully managing President Trump’s campaign is not defamatory,” Rosenhouse maintained. “It is the opposite.”
