During the 2020 presidential election campaign, former president Donald Trump conducted many interviews with journalist Bob Woodward in 2019 and 2020. The conversations were undertaken as research for Woodward’s book, “Rage,” which he was writing about the Trump presidency. The interviews were taped and later published by Woodward under the title “The Trump Tapes.”
In October of 2022, an audiobook titled “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump” was released. The audiobook did incredibly well, outselling all of Woodward’s prior books about the ex-president.
Former President Donald Trump sued Woodward, Simon & Schuster, and Paramount Global for nearly $50 million, claiming he never gave permission for the recordings from his talks to be published.
On Monday, January 30th, lawyers for Trump filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Florida. They claimed that Woodward had improperly used and profited from his interviews with Trump when he was president. They claim that Woodward recorded these conversations for use in his book.
The lawsuit claims that Trump repeatedly informed Woodward that he retained full ownership of the recordings and had the right to use them for any commercial purpose.
On Monday evening, Trump accused Woodward and his colleagues of illegally exploiting his voice and words for financial gain and trying to damage his reputation.
Many formats, including CDs, eBooks, and physical books, have been created from the original audiobook.
In a joint statement, Simon & Schuster and Robert Woodward said Trump’s lawsuit is baseless and that they intend to fight it in court.
They stated, “All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump’s knowledge and agreement.” They said that having this historical record in Trump’s own words is in the public interest. “We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor,” they added.