Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown has warned he may consider legal action against former President Donald Trump a story he recently told about nearly crashing a helicopter with Brown.
In an interview with CBS News this week, Brown said he had never been on a helicopter with Trump and threatened to sue the former president because “somebody has to make sure he stops lying.”
“If he keeps this up, at some point I’m going to give him a taste of his own conduct,” Brown said. “If he sues The New York Times for publishing that I said he lied, I’m going to sue him.”
Faced with questions about the validity of his article last week, Trump threatened to sue the New York Times.
Trump made the claim last week while answering a question about Brown’s relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris three decades ago.
“I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said. “I actually went down in a helicopter with him. We thought that might be the end of it.”
It appears Trump confused Brown with another politician.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown and Trump inspected wildfire damage in 2018. No problems were reported during their helicopter ride.
Former California Sen. Nate Holden believes Trump may have been talking about him, Politico first reported. He claims he was in a helicopter with Trump in 1990, and the plane nearly crashed.
“Willie is a little black guy who lives in San Francisco,” Holden told Politico. “I’m a big black guy who lives in Los Angeles.”
Brown said he would “absolutely” sue if necessary “because I don’t want my knowledge of Willie Brown to reflect negatively on anyone, especially someone as dear to me as Vice President Harris.”
Trump also claimed that Brown “was not a fan” of Harris and had said “terrible things” about her, something Brown, who dated Harris in the 1990s, also denied.
“Not on a helicopter, not out of a helicopter. That didn’t happen,” Brown said. “Nonexistent. He’s so creative. I don’t know how he dragged me on stage for something that should in no way be a distraction from the magnificence of his rise.”
Asked if this was simply confusion on Trump’s part, Brown said it was a “deliberate misrepresentation for his own benefit.”
“He’s trying to discredit her,” Brown said of Trump and Harris. “He could only think of one person that he could possibly bring into the fray that would be a negative for her.”
CBS News has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
— Paul Facey contributed to this report.
Nikole Killion
