On Wednesday, President Trump’s personal attorney, Charles Harder, fired off a letter to NBCUniversal warning that a defamation suit would be forthcoming if NBCUniversal did not offer a retraction or apology for allegations reported by MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell that Russian oligarchs co-signed loans to Trump.
The Hollywood Reporter (THR) noted that O’Donnell was speaking to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” Tuesday night when he stated that a “single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that the Trump — Donald Trump’s loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That’s how he was able to obtain those loans. And that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.” He added, “That would explain, it seems to me, every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin, if true, and I stress the ‘if true’ part of this.”
O’Donnell also tweeted, “A source close to Deutsche Bank says Trump’s tax returns show he pays very little income tax and, more importantly, that his loans have Russian co-signers. If true, that explains every kind word Trump has ever said about Russia and Putin.”
In Harder’s letter, he wrote, “The Program and Tweet make the false and defamatory statements that ‘Russian oligarchs’ co-signed loans provided to Mr. Trump by Deutsche Bank, and described these ‘co-signers’ as ‘Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.'”
The letter continued:
These statements are false and defamatory, and extremely damaging. The only borrowers under these loans are Trump entities, and Mr. Trump is the only guarantor. Numerous documents for each of these loans are also recorded, publicly available and searchable online. Thus, actual malice can easily be proven based on your reckless disregard of the truth and unreasonable reliance on an alleged ‘source’ who you will not even identify in your story and likely is seeking to mislead you and the public for political reasons or other ulterior motives.
O’Donnell later tweeted, “Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.”
THR noted, “The discussion of loans from Deutsche Bank come as Democrats in the House of Representatives attempt to subpoena documents from the financial institution … On Tuesday, Deutsche Bank confirmed in a court filing that its tranche of Trump-related documents include tax returns.”
CNN noted, “It’s not clear how O’Donnell’s reporting made it to air, given that NBC News was unable to verify his reporting. Usually, at networks, journalists must clear anonymously sourced reports with the network before reporting them on-air or online — a process O’Donnell acknowledged he didn’t follow in his Wednesday tweet … No other network or news organization, including CNN, has corroborated O’Donnell’s reporting. Notably, there was no mention of anything resembling O’Donnell’s reporting in the report issued earlier this year by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.”