Bob Woodward roasts Trump’s ‘everything is mine’ take in ‘unprecedented’ copyright suit: Interview tapes ‘belong to the People’ – By Adam Klasfeld (Law and Crime) / May 22, 2023
From George Washington to Joe Biden, U.S. presidents have harnessed the power of the press to reach the populace. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward argues that only one of those commanders-in-chief claimed a copyright interest in his words to a reporter.
Earlier this year, former President Donald Trump filed a $50 million lawsuit against Woodward in a federal court in Florida, over the publication of the audiobook “The Trump Tapes: The Historical Record.” Trump claims that Woodward promised only to use the 19 recorded interviews for the 2020 bestseller, “Rage.” Woodward’s release of the companion audiobook, Trump argues, “systematically, blatantly, and unlawfully usurped” his “copyright interests, his contractual rights, and the rights he holds as an interviewee.”
In a sworn statement, Woodward emphatically denies having agreed to the conditions Trump claims he did.
“Before beginning the interviews, I explained to President Trump that the Interviews would be used in my next book, which would come out in the Fall of 2020,” Woodward testified. “I made no other promises about the book or Interviews, and he made no requests beyond clarifications that the Interviews would not be used in contemporaneous reporting in The Washington Post.”
