President Trump’s campaign is suing the Washington Post for spending advertising dollars to “boost” its anti-Trump editorial content on social media, illegally pushing content favorable to Vice President Harris in front of more readers in the final days of the election. Although the Post’s anti-Trump opinion editors were barred by the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, from publishing the formal endorsement they’d written of Ms. Harris, they have endorsed her “in the dark,” the Trump-Vance camp argues. 

The complaint, which was filed on Thursday, accuses the Post of violating the Federal Election Campaign Act and the Federal Election Commission regulations by issuing “illegal corporate in-kind contributions” and calls on the Commission to investigate the paper’s expenditures. 

“‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ according to The Washington Post, yet on the eve of the 2024 general election, it is the Post that reportedly is conducting a dark money corporate campaign in opposition to President Donald J. Trump—pretextually using its own online advertising efforts to promote Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy,” the complaint charges. 

The complaint cites an article from an online news site, Semafor, which reports that on Monday — just over a week before the election — the Washington Post “aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign” and boosted numerous articles that were critical of Trump. Such stories include articles targeting Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his misstatements, how he negatively impacted Springfield, Ohio, how crowds leave his rallies early, among other stories, Semafor contends. 

“Boosting” is a common marketing practice among publishers, when they pay social media platforms such as Twitter or Meta to increase readership for their content. The Trump camp seeks to characterize the boosting of anti-Trump Post articles as, effectively, paid advertising in favor of Ms. Harris and thus an illegal campaign contribution.

Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, corporations are barred from making “a contribution or expenditure in connection with any election to any political office” or “for any candidate, political committee, or other person knowingly to accept or receive any contribution.” 

The Trump-Vance campaign charges that “there is reason to believe” that the paper “has made coordinated communications, which constitute illegal corporate in-kind contributions to Harris for President, and that Harris for President has accepted such contributions.” 

Should the advertised articles not qualify as “in-kind contributions,” the complaint notes, they would be deemed “independent expenditures” which are required to be reported and disclosed by the paper in advance. “But as of the date of the filing of this complaint, on October 31, 2024, no 24-Hour Reports have been filed with the Commission,” the complaint alleges. 

Trump’s legal arguments may be tendentious — and without precedent — but the lawsuit pokes Mr. Bezos just as he’s been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to pull his liberal newspaper more to the center.

The paper is now reeling from a massive subscriber defection over Mr. Bezos’ interdict on publishing a masthead editorial backing Ms. Harris and denouncing Trump.

Mr. Bezos’s decision was announced last Friday by the publisher, Will Lewis, who insisted that the policy change should not be taken as a “tacit endorsement of one candidate” nor “a condemnation of another” but that the decision reflects “the values The Post has always stood for.” 

While unsigned newspaper “masthead editorials” are no longer influential, Mr. Bezos’ decision caused an uproar inside the newspaper, and the subsequent avalanche of publicity led to more than 250,000 subscriber cancellations — nearly 10 percent of the paper’s total paying digital subscribers. 

Inside the Post, prominent staffers framing the decision as an effort by Mr. Bezos, who founded Amazon, to bend the knee to Trump ahead of a potential second term. More than 20 opinion columnists called the non-endorsement “a terrible mistake” in a dissenting opinion article published in the Post on Friday and three editorial board members — out of a ten-member board — stepped down from their positions on the board. 

Amid the controversy, Mr. Bezos published a rare opinion article in the Post denying that his decision was driven by a desire to be in Trump’s good standings. He also referenced a recent meeting between the chief executive of one of his companies, Blue Origin, and Trump — which he claims provided “ammunition” for the appearance of conflict — and insisted that it had no connection to his decision. 

Rather, the billionaire businessman cited the public’s rising distrust of the media as his reasoning for the new non-endorsement policy. “Our profession is now the least trusted of all,” he wrote. “Something we are doing is clearly not working.”