The Lincoln Project issued a scathing response to a threat from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s lawyer to sue the anti-Trump Republican group for its billboards installed in Times Square featuring the two White House senior advisers smiling alongside body bags and figures that reflect the country’s alarming COVID-19 fatality rate.
On Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney representing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner demanded that the Lincoln Project take down the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages.”
The next day, a lawyer for the Lincoln Project, a group of former Republican consultants who have broken from President Trump and support Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden instead ahead of next month’s election, wrote that the group “will not be intimidated by empty bluster” and to “sue if you must” over the Times Square billboards.
“Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster,” attorney Matthew Sanderson wrote to Kasowitz in a legal response issued Saturday night. “Your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.”
Sanderson hammered into his rebuke against Kasowitz’s threats further, writing that due to a “gross act of nepotism” the President’s daughter and his son-in law have become public officials whom Americans “have the right to discuss and criticise freely.”
Sanderson wrote that the “bruised self-image” of Ivanka Trump “does not change the fact that this billboard accurately depicts her support of a federal response that has utterly failed to prevent an unmitigated tragedy for the United States”.
After writing that the Lincoln Project would “welcome the opportunity to further establish the truthfulness of its Times Square billboards through litigation and discovery,” Sanderson told Kasowitz to “sue if you must.”
“May I suggest that if Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the COVID-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch,” Sanderson wrote.
Sanderson concluded his scathing letter by writing “this isn’t over” and that there is more to come from the Lincoln Project soon.
Read Sanderson’s letter to Kasowitz below:
The Lincoln Project’s legal response to the frivolous threat of a lawsuit from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s lawyer.
This will not be the last they hear from us. pic.twitter.com/GNnFsnsCer
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 24, 2020
