It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is as ignorant about constitutional law as he is about every other matter pertinent to the nation’s highest office.

Still, the letter Mr. Trump’s lawyers sent to The Times on Wednesday — in which he threatened to sue the newspaper for publishing an article detailing two women’s allegations that Mr. Trump had groped or kissed them without consent — is extraordinary in its complete misunderstanding of both the facts and the law.

The letter charged the article with being “libelous,” “reckless” and “defamatory,” called it a “politically-motivated effort to defeat Mr. Trump’s candidacy” and accused The Times of inadequately investigating the truth of the claims.

Similar accounts by other women were published recently in The Palm Beach Post, in People magazine, by NBC News and by a television station in Washington State.