US President Donald Trump announced Monday evening that he is suing the New York Times for defamation, demanding $15 billion from the newspaper in a new episode of his campaign against the media.

"The New York Times has been allowed to lie, slander, and defame me freely for far too long, and it stops, NOW!" Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that the case would be tried in Florida (southeast).

"I have the great honor of filing a $15 billion defamation and slander lawsuit against The New York Times," he said.

The president calls the prestigious daily "one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the history of our country." He accuses it of being "a true mouthpiece for the radical left Democratic Party" and of having supported Kamala Harris during the last presidential campaign.

The New York Times has been "engaged for decades against your favorite president (ME!), my family, my business," he wrote.

The Republican president threatened last week to sue the New York daily after it published articles about a salacious birthday letter attributed to Trump and addressed to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The head of state had assured that the signature on this letter, dated 2003, was not his.

But the New York Times maintained its version, publishing in particular several letters signed by the businessman in the late 1990s or early 2000s, with signatures bearing a striking resemblance to the one on the 2003 letter.

"Real malice"

In the 85-page complaint, seen by AFP, which targets the newspaper and four of its journalists, as well as a publishing house that published two of them, Donald Trump attacks a "derogatory book" on the origin of his fortune and "three false, malicious, defamatory and derogatory articles."

These articles were written "with genuine malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage" on him, he further claims in his complaint.

The New York Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment and did not mention a complaint on its website Tuesday morning.

This is not Donald Trump's first complaint against media outlets he considers hostile.

In July, he sued the Wall Street Journal for at least $10 billion in defamation, again after it published an article alleging another salacious letter to Jeffrey Epstein.

The US president also threatened to strip ABC and NBC of their broadcasting licenses over allegedly biased coverage against him.

These networks are "an arm of the Democratic Party and should, according to many, have their licenses revoked" by the FCC, the federal agency responsible for regulating telecommunications, he wrote in August on Truth Social.