A judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch over reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, ruling that the U.S. president failed to demonstrate that the article was published with intent to be malicious while leaving the door open for an amended complaint.
District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Florida wrote in the order that Trump had not made the argument that the article was published with the intent required to prove defamation under the “actual malice” standard that applies to public figures, according to Sky News. The judge gave the president a chance to file an amended complaint addressing the legal deficiencies in his original filing.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump characterized the lawsuit, filed in July last year, as “historic legal action” which he claimed was filed on behalf of himself and all Americans who will “no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media.” The language framed personal legal action as public interest litigation despite the case being filed to protect Trump’s reputation rather than broader press freedom concerns.
“I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case,” he wrote after launching the defamation lawsuit—threatening language suggesting litigation was intended to harass defendants through discovery burdens rather than merely seek damages for reputational harm.
The Wall Street Journal’s report focused on a letter the publication disclosed Trump wrote as part of a collection Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell planned to give him as a 50th birthday present in 2003. Trump claimed that the letter he allegedly wrote to convicted pedophile Epstein was “fake” and declared he would sue the “ass off” Murdoch after the Wall Street Journal published the story last July.
The Wall Street Journal indicated the letter featured several lines of typewritten text, concluding with: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” The text was framed by what appeared to be a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, the publication claimed. The letter is also said to have featured the signature “Donald.”
Trump immediately denied writing the letter, which was subsequently released publicly by Congress via subpoenaed records from Epstein’s estate when the report was published. “The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” he wrote on Truth Social at the time.
“These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper,” Trump continued, employing characteristically crude language to attack one of the world’s most influential business publications.
The Independent confirmed that a federal judge dismissed Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, and the journalists and publishers who documented an alleged birthday letter to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the president claims does not exist.
The letter—allegedly signed by Trump and featuring a sexually suggestive drawing and a birthday wish stating “may every day be another wonderful secret”—was first published by the newspaper and then shared with members of Congress by the Epstein estate last year, making it part of the public record that anyone could examine.
Trump has repeatedly denied writing the letter and denied that a signature on the document is his. He filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit last summer, claiming that “no authentic letter or drawing exists” and blasting the story as a “false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is” the Wall Street Journal.
In his order Monday, Florida District Judge Gayles argued that Trump failed to show that the article was published with “actual malice”—the legal standard for proving defamation against public figures established by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan—and opened the door for the president to file an amended complaint addressing the legal deficiencies.
Trump came “nowhere close to this standard,” Judge Gayles wrote. “Quite the opposite,” he emphasized, employing unusually blunt language for a judicial order dismissing a sitting president’s lawsuit.
The president’s lawsuit alleges that he told the defendants that the letter “was a fake before they ran the article,” the judge noted in his ruling. “President Trump argues that this allegation shows that Defendants acted with serious doubts about the truth of their reporting and, therefore, with actual malice. The Court disagrees,” he wrote.
Trump’s “conclusory allegation” that the newspaper had “contradictory evidence and failed to investigate” his claims “is rebutted by the article itself and is insufficient to establish actual malice,” the judge explained, indicating that the Wall Street Journal’s reporting demonstrated appropriate journalistic investigation rather than reckless disregard for truth.
In a footnote, the judge also noted that the “very existence” of the birthday letter “bears on whether the article is true and, even if it is false, whether defendants acted with actual malice”—suggesting that the letter’s subsequent release by Congress through Epstein estate documents undermined Trump’s claims about fabrication.
“President Trump will follow Judge Gayles’s ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other Defendants,” a spokesperson for the president’s legal team told The Independent, employing triumphalist language despite the dismissal. “The president will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People.”
The newspaper published a 50th birthday greeting to Epstein from 2003 which included a message stating “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” all written inside the outline of a woman’s body—sexually suggestive imagery that Trump claims he would never create.
The publication of the letter joined a wave of reporting into the government’s handling of investigations into Epstein as Trump’s Department of Justice sought to draw federal probes to a close, drawing more scrutiny into the president’s relationship with the wealthy sex offender and his alleged connections to a wider network of powerful figures.
The president’s lawsuit “does not include a single plausible allegation” that The Wall Street Journal knowingly published false statements about him, lawyers for the defendants wrote in response last year. The article is “true,” they asserted, and the evidence is publicly available for anyone to examine since Congress released it.
“This case calls out for dismissal,” they wrote, characterizing Trump’s lawsuit as “an affront to the First Amendment” and an attempt to “silence a newspaper for publishing speech that was subsequently proven true by documents released by Congress to the American public.”
“By its very nature, this meritless lawsuit threatens to chill the speech of those who dare to publish content that the president does not like,” they added, arguing that allowing the suit to proceed would embolden Trump and future presidents to use defamation litigation as weapon against critical journalism.
The Independent has requested comment from Trump’s legal team and spokespeople for The Wall Street Journal. The White House referred The Independent’s inquiry to the president’s counsel, maintaining separation between official governmental functions and Trump’s personal legal battles.
The president’s name appears thousands of times within the millions of documents released by the Justice Department as part of legislation that Trump had signed into law requiring disclosure of Epstein-related materials. Trump socialized with Epstein throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and Epstein once described himself as the president’s “closest friend” in interviews with journalists.
Trump has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and one’s appearance in the Epstein files does not suggest otherwise absent specific allegations. The president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and insists he severed ties with Epstein years before the wealthy pedophile—who died by suicide in a New York City jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges—came under investigation.
The president, meanwhile, continues threatening media outlets, publishers, and journalists with legal action over critical coverage, and he routinely suggests he can revoke broadcast licenses for networks over their antagonistic reporting of his administration. He is embroiled in another defamation lawsuit against the BBC, which he has accused of editing his speech to a crowd on January 6, 2021.
Last year, a federal judge lambasted the president’s legal team in a scathing order dismissing the president’s $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, which the judge called “decidedly improper and impermissible”—language suggesting judicial frustration with Trump’s pattern of filing legally deficient suits against media organizations.
The dismissal of the Wall Street Journal lawsuit represents another setback in Trump’s campaign to use defamation litigation as tool for punishing critical journalism. While the judge left open possibility for amended complaint, the requirement that Trump demonstrate actual malice—meaning the publication knew statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for truth—creates high bar that plaintiffs rarely clear in defamation cases against media defendants.
For press freedom advocates, the dismissal reinforces protections established by New York Times v. Sullivan that prevent public figures from easily silencing critical reporting through defamation suits. However, the ability of a sitting president to file $10 billion lawsuits against media organizations—regardless of legal merit—creates financial and reputational pressures that could discourage aggressive investigative journalism.
As Trump weighs whether to file amended complaint addressing the legal deficiencies Judge Gayles identified, the case illustrates the ongoing tension between presidential power, press freedom, and the First Amendment protections that theoretically prevent governmental retaliation against critical media coverage but cannot eliminate the harassment value of expensive, time-consuming litigation.
For now, the Wall Street Journal can continue reporting on Trump’s Epstein connections without fear of immediate legal consequences from the dismissed lawsuit, though the threat of amended filing and Trump’s pattern of litigation against critics creates ongoing uncertainty about the costs of aggressive journalism documenting presidential conduct and associations.
Skynews/TheIndependent
