A lawyer claiming to represent President Donald Trump is demanding that NBCUniversal and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell retract reporting by O’Donnell stating that Russian oligarchs co-signed loans to Trump by Deutsche Bank.
“These statements are false and defamatory, and extremely damaging,” attorney Charles Harder wrote Wednesday in a letter on behalf of the president and the Trump Organization to Susan Weiner and Daniel Kummer, in-house attorneys at NBCUniversal.
“The only borrowers under these loans are Trump entities, and Mr. Trump is the only guarantor,” Harder wrote in the letter, obtained by POLITICO. “Numerous documents for each of these loans are also recorded, publicly available and searchable online.”
O’Donnell on Tuesday said at the outset of his MSNBC weeknight news broadcast that a single anonymous source close to Deutsche Bank told him the German lender had obtained Trump’s tax returns, which “show that the president pays very little income tax.”
He said the source also told him that 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.”
O’Donnell concluded: “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.”
Harder in his letter Wednesday requested that O’Donnell and NBCUniversal “immediately and prominently retract, correct and apologize for the … false and defamatory statements.”
If they do not confirm their intention to do so within 24 hours, Harder warned, his clients will be left “with no alternative but to consider their legal options which could include immediate legal proceedings against” O’Donnell and NBCUniversal.
“Should that occur, my clients would pursue all available causes of action and seek all available damages and other legal remedies to the maximum extent permitted by law,” Harder wrote.
Asked to respond to Harder’s letter and O’Donnell’s reporting, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement: “This is one of the reasons that a majority of Americans have lost trust in the media. Instead of applying ethics and standards to their reporting, journalists and left-wing outlets have weaponized the media, using it to attack and harass people with little to no regard for the truth.”
Grisham directed reporters to the president’s private counsel when asked to confirm whether Harder is representing the president in the dispute.
Representatives for NBCUniversal did not respond to a request for comment.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine