NYT lawyer issues a bring-it-on reply to Trump libel suit threat

So you say your corporate legal team is stodgy and slow to respond?

Perhaps your counselors might take a cue from an attorney for The New York Times.

Lawyers for the Old Gray Lady have responded in striking fashion to Marc Kasowitz, an attorney for GOP nominee Donald Trump. Kasowitz demanded that the Times retract an article published this week, in which two women alleged Trump had perpetrated unwanted sexual contact against each of them, separately, some years ago.

If the report was not retracted and pulled from the NYT website, Kasowitz threatened, Trump would sue the paper for libel. (Kasowitz also demanded an apology.)

David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, pulled no punches, ostensibly daring Trump to take the Times to court.

“The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation. … Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself,” McCraw wrote in a terse letter.