LOS ANGELES – Larry Flynt, who turned his raunchy Hustler magazine into an empire while fighting numerous First Amendment court battles and flaying politicians with stunts such as a Donald Trump assassination Christmas card, has died.
He was 78. Flynt, who had been in declining health, died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his longtime attorney, Paul Cambria, told The Associated Press.
Flynt was shot in a 1978 assassination attempt and left paralyzed from the waist down but refused to slow down, building a flamboyant reputation along with a fortune estimated at $100 million.
He tooled around in a gold-plated wheelchair with a velvet-lined seat. “His doctors had said he should have passed away 30 years ago,” his nephew, Jimmy Flynt