Former President Donald Trump filed a $49 million lawsuit against investigative journalist Bob Woodward and his publisher on Monday in response to the sale of interview tapes.

Trump claims that while he agreed to the recording of the interviews for the purpose of publishing a book or story, he objected to their public release. He accuses Woodward, his publisher Simon & Schuster, and the parent company, Paramount Global, of copyright violations and undue financial gain from the audio.

“The central issue in this lawsuit is Mr. Woodward’s systematic usurpation, manipulation, and exploitation of audio of President Trump obtained in conjunction with a number of conversations that Mr. Woodward conducted. In a complaint, Trump’s attorneys claimed that the aforementioned audio was protected content with a number of usage and distribution restrictions.

Trump gave Woodward at least 19 interviews, beginning with his 2016 presidential campaign and continuing through the period between December 2019 and August 2020, when Woodward was writing his book Rage, which was published following the final interview. Simon & Schuster published The Trump Tapes, an audiobook of those interviews, in October.

“As he clearly understands, journalist Bob Woodward never had my permission to make tapes of my numerous interviews with him public. Those tapes were only allowed to ensure that he accurately captured my quotations and assertions for “the WRITTEN WORD” or his book, which is still completely incorrect. Trump previously stated on his Truth Social platform that the tapes are far superior to the book.

The complaint stated that Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House, which was released in 2018 before Rage in 2020, sold over 2 million copies and predicted that the audiotapes would do the same. Each Trump Tapes audiobook costs $24.99 USD. Trump’s legal team calculated the $50 million request for damages by multiplying the two figures.

According to Trump’s legal team, in addition to publishing the audio without his permission, Woodward and his publisher edited the files in order to harm the former president’s reputation.

The responses provided by President Trump, in which he has a copyright interest, “appear to have been extremely liberated with, far from being a ‘raw’ and unedited recording, and the answers were manipulated to alter President Trump’s language as well as to support the particular narrative desired by Woodward, SSI, and Paramount,” according to the complaint.

The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The audiobooks were previously defended by Pulitzer Prize winner Woodward, who stated that the recordings were made “on the record” and “voluntarily.”