Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been involved in over 5,000 lawsuits as either a defendant or plaintiff, many of which have also involved his current or former employees.
Now there's another former employee he may fight in court: his former ghostwriter.
Ghostwriter Tony Schwartz came forward on Monday and apologized for writing The Art of the Deal, saying it should have been called The Art of the Sociopath. Trump responded at the time with little more than disappointment, but we probably should have guessed it wouldn't end there.
From The New Yorker:
Jason D. Greenblatt, the general counsel and vice-president of the Trump Organization, issued a threatening cease-and-desist letter to Schwartz. [...] In it, Greenblatt accuses Schwartz—who has likened his writing of the flattering book to putting “lipstick on a pig”—of making “defamatory statements” about the Republican nominee and claiming that he, not Trump, wrote the book, “thereby exposing” himself to “liability for damages and other tortious harm.”
Greenblatt demands that Schwartz send “a certified check made payable to Mr. Trump” for all of the royalties he had earned on the book, along with Schwartz’s half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance.
Schwartz has committed to donating royalties from sales of the book he wrote to the National Immigration Law Center, Human Rights Watch, the Center for the Victims of Torture, the National Immigration Forum, and the Tahirih Justice Center.
Rather than make those donations, Trump's legal team is demanding that Schwartz hand the money over to Trump.
We all know Donald Trump is not as charitable as he claims to be, but this is really on the nose.