Trump threatens to sue New York Times for debunking helicopter story in furious phone call

Former President Donald Trump doubled down on his assertion that he was in a near-helicopter crash with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, calling The New York Times and threatening to sue over their coverage of his news conference, in which he made the claim, reported Maggie Haberman on Friday.

Trump, according to the report, placed the call while his private Boeing 757, commonly nicknamed "Trump Force One," was grounded during an emergency landing in Billings, Montana, on the way to his Bozeman rally.

Per Haberman, Trump "excoriated The Times for its coverage of his meandering news conference on Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home, during which he told of an emergency landing during a helicopter trip that he said both he and Mr. Brown had made together," saying, “We have the flight records of the helicopter,” that it landed in "a field," and that he is "probably going to sue" the news outlet for suggesting otherwise.

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Trump's helicopter story came during questioning at his Mar-a-Lago press conference about Brown, with whom Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee, had a romantic involvement early in her career when she was a prosecutor in San Francisco. Republicans have sought to portray this relationship as sordid or conferring political favors on her, as she was named to a low-level municipal appointment around this time.

There is no publicly available evidence Trump was ever in a helicopter with Brown, who denies this ever happened, let alone that the helicopter nearly crashed.

However, The Times noted, Trump may have simply confused Willie Brown with Jerry Brown, the former governor of California. Trump did survey the damage from the Paradise wildfire with Jerry Brown by helicopter in 2018, although there was never any report that the helicopter experienced problems in flight.

At the time, Trump infamously scolded the state of California for not doing enough to "rake" their forests in response to the fire, and even threatened to cut off wildfire management funding.