Federal judge dismisses Trump's $10 billion defamation suit against Wall Street Journal
A US federal judge has permanently dismissed Donald Trump's amended lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over a report on a birthday letter linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
A federal judge in Miami has permanently dismissed US President Donald Trump's amended defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its parent company, News Corp., controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Trump had sought $10 billion in damages over a July 2025 report about a birthday letter he allegedly sent to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The WSJ article described a sexually suggestive note that Trump allegedly gave Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. According to the report, the note appeared in a book of congratulatory letters compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein's sex-trafficking scheme. The note read, among other things, «Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret», and was framed by a hand-drawn outline of what appeared to be a nude woman, with a signature resembling Trump's placed where the figure's pelvic region might be.
Trump strongly denied writing the card. «This is not me», he said. «This is a fake thing. I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women.» He then pursued legal action against the newspaper and Murdoch's company.
The case had already faced a setback. In April, US District Judge Darrin Gayles rejected Trump's initial complaint but allowed his legal team to correct the defects the court had identified and file a new one. On Saturday, Gayles dismissed that second attempt as well, writing that, as with the first, Trump had failed to demonstrate that the defendants acted with actual malice when reporting on the birthday card.
In a 20-page ruling, Gayles rejected the argument from Trump's lawyers that the outlet should have dropped the story once the president denied involvement with Epstein. «That is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment», he wrote. The dismissal was made «with prejudice», meaning the case cannot be refiled.
A spokesperson for Dow Jones & Co., the WSJ's publisher, said the company was pleased with the decision. A representative of Trump's legal team said the president would continue to hold those who mislead the American people with «Fake News» and smears accountable. A source told CBS News that the ruling will likely be appealed.
The dispute unfolds against the wider backdrop of Trump's relationship with Epstein, which he has repeatedly denied was close. Epstein died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. Trump's name appears on at least 3,000 occasions in a large trove of files related to the investigation into Epstein's case, which the US Department of Justice released last year.
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