A federal judge just flattened President Trump’s $49 million lawsuit against Bob Woodward, cutting short his attempt to stake a legal claim over audio interviews he willingly gave.
According to The Hill, after more than a year of legal back-and-forth, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe threw out the case, rejecting Trump’s assertion that he was a co-author on the tapes used in Woodward’s 2020 book, “Rage.”
Trump had brought the lawsuit in January 2023, protesting the sale and use of recorded interviews he gave to Woodward—a move that raised eyebrows considering he’d not only answered every question, but also approved the recording of the discussions.
This wasn’t some progressive appointee playing political games. Judge Gardephe, tapped by former President George W. Bush, made it clear that copyright law doesn’t treat answering interview questions as joint authorship.
The court said plainly that Trump’s answers—even if sharp or groundbreaking—weren’t eligible for ownership under federal copyright protection, effectively deflating the entire premise of the case. Even Trump’s additional state-law claims didn’t stick. The judge swiped those off the board, too, explaining they were overridden by federal copyright rules.
Trump’s legal team had spent months urging Gardephe to finally make a call, especially after the dismissal motion sat on the judge’s desk for over a year. It wasn't until December, well after repeated nudges from the president’s attorneys, that the judge acknowledged he was “at work” on the matter. Still, he declined to speed things up. The legal team’s patience wore thin as the calendar flipped and the court remained silent, long past what most Americans would consider a reasonable timeline for justice.
The crux of Trump’s case hinged on whether he could block the commercial release of the taped conversations. The argument: he didn’t permit to sale of the recordings themselves, only to record them for the book.
That claim wasn’t enough. Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, moved to dismiss the case early on, pointing to established copyright doctrine. Judge Gardephe agreed with their position, saying there’s little backing for the idea that interviewees have intellectual property rights to their responses during recorded interviews.
A representative from Simon & Schuster wasted no time expressing satisfaction, calling the ruling a clear victory and noting the court "dismissed the case."
Meanwhile, Trump’s team blasted the decision, describing it as “another biased action by a New York Court." They argued the ruling was handed down “without even affording President Trump the basic due process of a hearing.” That’s not just sour grapes—it’s a callout of a judicial system that too often seems to lean on double standards depending on who’s in the defendant’s chair.
Though not central to the outcome, it’s worth noting that Simon & Schuster—one of the defendants in the suit—has since changed hands, no longer part of Paramount Global but now owned by a private investment firm.
Regardless of who holds the publishing rights today, the judge’s opinion made clear that the distribution of the interview recordings fell within legal bounds all along. This wasn’t about who owned the company—it was about whether you can retroactively claim ownership over an interview you walked into willingly and knowingly allowed to be recorded.
Trump’s cases often make headlines, but when the system dawdles long enough, stories like this one fade—until a judge finally weighs in months later, often quietly, and often unfavorably.
The court’s stance here isn’t without consequence. It strengthens protections for journalists while setting a hard limit on how far public figures can go in reclaiming control of their own public words. It’s a frustrating reminder that the legal deck isn't always stacked in favor of truth or fairness, just along the lines drawn by technicalities and precedent.
