United States

Trump sues the New York Times and JPMorgan

Double judicial offensive by the president against the press and finance, amid accusations of manipulated polls and political discrimination

22 January 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

On the same day that he returned to a scathing attack on alleged 'fake polls', Donald Trump announced that he will expand his defamation lawsuit against the New York Times to include a recent unfavourable poll. Not satisfied with that, the president then filed a $5 billion or more lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon: the bank is allegedly guilty of 'debanking' him for political reasons, i.e., closing accounts and banking services in a discriminatory manner.

The first affair stems from the tycoon's obsession with approval numbers and the political power of polls. Trump said he intends to expand his defamation action already underway against the New York Times after the publication of a poll conducted by the newspaper with Siena University that places him at low approval levels. The president explained that his challenge to the survey would be 'added' to the existing lawsuit against the newspaper, which had been filed in 2025 and later refiled after an initial stop in court.

It is the same line that Trump has reiterated in posts on Truth Social, the social media site he owns, in which he frontally attacks 'Fake Polls', describes them as 'out of control' and claims that low data would be incompatible with results he calls outstanding on the economy and borders. The president then adds that "real polls" would be great but "they refuse to publish them" and accuses the New York Times and "so many others" of publishing "knowingly false" surveys, going so far as to claim that "they have to pay a price" and that the lawsuit he filed is "taking its course through the courts".

"False and fraudulent polls should be considered, virtually, a crime. For example, all the anti-Trump media that followed me during the 2020 election showed knowingly incorrect polls. They knew their stuff by trying to influence the election, but I won by an avalanche of votes, including the popular vote, in all 7 undecided states," he writes in Truth, citing "fraudulent polls" that "had nothing to do with the final results" commissioned byThe New York Times, Abc, Nbc, Cbs, Cnn and Msdnc.

And again, "Even the polls of FoxNews and the Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, bad! There have been great pollsters who have been right" about what then occurred in the "election, but the media does not want to exploit them in any way. Isn't it sad what happened to American journalism? I will do everything I can to stop this poll TRUFFLE from going ahead!"

The second front, the one against JPMorgan, is more concrete on a legal level because it rests on afiled deed and on financial agency reports. Trump filed a $5 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, alleging that the bank would "unilaterally and without notice" close personal and corporate accounts. The action was filed in a Florida state court and, according to the president's reconstruction, the closure of bank accounts is allegedly politically motivated.

According to a report in the Financial Times, the tenant of the Oval Office has filed the lawsuit in a Miami-Dade County state court, accusing the lending institution of violating Florida's deceptive trade practices regulations. For some time now, the president has been quite critical of large US banks for their reluctance to offer him banking services after he leaves the White House in 2021.

JPMorgan, for its part, rejects this approach. The institution denies that account closures occur for political or religious reasons and instead argues that such decisions are made when a relationship creates 'legal or regulatory risks' for the company. The bank therefore calls the lawsuit without merit and says it will defend itself in court.

The Financial Times also recalls that JPMorgan had made it known as early as last November that the government was investigating fair access to banking services offered to customers and that the bank had asked both the current and previous administrations to change the rules that it said had placed it in this situation, supporting efforts to avoid an 'instrumentalisation' of the banking sector.