President Donald Trump will have another case coming to the Supreme Court from his personal docket. This one relates to the defamation lawsuit he filed against CNN over the network’s use of the phrase “big lie” regarding his claims about the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In March, the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declined to consider his case, after a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld a district judge’s ruling against him. Two of the three judges from the unanimous panel ruling were Trump appointees, as was the district judge who dismissed Trump’s suit in 2023. The judge did so on the grounds that the statements at issue were opinion, not factually false statements, and that Trump hadn’t shown that CNN acted with “actual malice.”
Trump argued that CNN’s use of the “big lie” phrase was intended to associate him with Adolf Hitler and Nazi propaganda. But the appellate panel deemed his claim “unpersuasive,” calling his assumption that the term is clear enough to be a factual statement “untenable.” It called his other claims “meritless.”
The March denial from the full appeals court put the president on the clock to petition the justices if he wanted a chance at saving the case. A filing this month to the high court confirms that he will be petitioning the justices, but not quite yet. The filing said his petition is due June 15 but he wants an extension to Aug. 14. Such extensions are routinely requested and granted. The request was made specifically to Justice Clarence Thomas, which is also routine because Thomas is the justice assigned to field administrative requests like this from the 11th Circuit.
In his extension request, Trump’s personal lawyers appeared to re-up his rigged-election claims that he has continued to press. Previewing the petition they intend to file, they said the network’s “allegations were false, but were perceived as historical fact by large segments of CNN’s audience. In reality, President Trump was lawfully pursuing then-unresolved, and now proven, claims about election irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.” The filing does not appear to detail the “irregularities” or how they have been “proven.”