President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, N.J., August 15, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Update 4:36p.m.: In a Wednesday afternoon tweet drafted hours after Trump’s legal threat went public, O’Donnell admitted that he made a “error in judgment” in publicly accusing the president of co-signing loans with Russian oligarchs and promised to address the issue on his program.

Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight. — Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) August 28, 2019

President Trump’s attorney sent a letter to NBCUniversal Wednesday threatening the company with legal action in response to what he charged was an unfounded claim made on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell the previous night.


In the demand letter, which was obtained by the the Hollywood Reporter, Trump attorney Charles Harder threatens to file a defamation suit against NBCUniversal if the company refuses to retract O’Donnell’s claim that Russian oligarchs co-signed a series of loans Deutsche Bank extended to Trump.

“The Program and Tweet make the false and defamatory statements that ‘Russian oligarchs’ co-signed loans provided to Mr. Trump by Deutsche Bank, and described these ‘co-signers’ as ‘Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin,’” the letter reads.


Harder argues that the accusation is easily disproven and suggests the network neglected its due diligence out of a desire to tar a political enemy.

“The only borrowers under these loans are Trump entities, and Mr. Trump is the only guarantor,” the letter continues. “Numerous documents for each of these loans are also recorded, publicly available and searchable online. Thus, actual malice can easily be proven based on your reckless disregard of the truth and unreasonable reliance on an alleged ‘source’ who you will not even identify in your story and likely is seeking to mislead you and the public for political reasons or other ulterior motives.”

O’Donnell raised the Deutsche Bank loans during his Tuesday night program in the context of House Democrats’ ongoing legal battle to secure records from the bank. The White House has resisted a congressional subpoena for the documents on the grounds that there is no legitimate legislative purpose that would justify such a demand.


White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham lambasted O’Donnell Wednesday for publishing a single-sourced, unverified claim that would have profound implications if true.

“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 told Fox News.

Critics of the president have speculated that Trump or one of his allies had some leverage over Deutsche Bank that allowed the Trump organization to continue procuring loans from the institution for projects that all other major banks refused to support.

NBCUniversal did not respond to a request for comment by press time and NBC News had not, as of the time of this writing, published any article supporting O’Donnell’s claims.

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