Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown (D) isn’t ruling out legal action against Donald Trump on Saturday after the GOP presidential nominee shared a bonkers story that involved him and Brown experiencing a near-helicopter crash.
Brown — who Trump named in the wild tale at a rambling press conference earlier this month — has disputed the former president’s claims that he joined him in a helicopter and denied that he told Trump “terrible things” about Vice President Kamala Harris, who he dated in the mid-1990s.
“If he keeps it up, at some point, I’m going to give him a taste of his own conduct,” Brown told CBS News, adding that “somebody has got to make sure” Trump “stops lying.”
The former San Francisco mayor later pointed to Trump telling The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman that he was “probably going to sue” the paper over its coverage of the story.
The Times reported that the former president, during his phone call with Haberman, “vehemently maintained” that he was in the helicopter with Brown when they experienced an emergency landing despite the former San Francisco mayor’s denial.
“If he sues The New York Times for printing that I said he lied, I’m going to sue him,” Brown told CBS News.
Joseph Cotchett, Brown’s attorney, said that Brown isn’t the type of person to bring a lawsuit, according to San Francisco’s KRON-TV.
“He’s a reputable guy who’s never brought a lawsuit in his life, but you know who’s pushing him to do it? A guy named Trump,” Cotchett said.
HuffPost has reached out to the Trump campaign, which was not immediately available for comment.
The update from Brown comes after Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles City Council member who served as a California state senator, told Politico that he believed Trump confused him with the former San Francisco mayor in the story.
The former president hasn’t shared the helicopter story since Politico dropped the story on Holden.
Holden, in a phone call with the New York Times on Saturday, said Trump should be “held accountable” if he’s “propagating a lie.”
“I’m 95 years old, and Willie is 90, and he made the assumption we wouldn’t be here anymore, and nobody would challenge it,” Holden said.
“Well, we’re alive and well.”
Brown acknowledged that it’d “be bad” for his reputation if he was on a chopper with the former president.
“That’s a bad place to be, particularly with a guy who’s been convicted 34 times,” Brown said.
“No one knows why he chose a helicopter — it was the most unexpected place to put me.”
