A federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal over its report of his lewd birthday greeting to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Darrin Gayles in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida said in his decision that Mr. Trump had not “plausibly alleged” that The Journal published the article with “actual malice,” a legal standard meaning that it knew what it was publishing was false or had acted with reckless disregard as to its accuracy.
Judge Gayles dismissed the complaint without prejudice, allowing Mr. Trump to bring the same claim again.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement on Monday that the president would refile “this powerhouse lawsuit.” Mr. Trump made a similar comment on social media.
A spokesman for Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal, said in a statement: “We are pleased with the judge’s decision to dismiss this complaint. We stand behind the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting.”
Mr. Trump’s lawsuit centered on a Journal article published on July 17 with the headline: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” It described a letter that appeared to be from Mr. Trump in a 2003 birthday album compiled for Mr. Epstein. The article said the letter had a drawing of a naked woman on it with Mr. Trump’s signature below her waist, and a message that read: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Mr. Trump told The Journal that “this is a fake thing” and said he “never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women.” He said in a lawsuit filed the day after the article was published that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”
Mr. Trump sued The Journal’s parent company, News Corp, as well as Rupert Murdoch, News Corp’s founder; Robert Thomson, the chief executive; Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher; and two Journal reporters. He asked for $10 billion in damages.
The president has been particularly sensitive to his association with Mr. Epstein. At the time The Journal article was published, he was under increasing pressure to release files related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Epstein.
A copy of the birthday book including the letter first reported by The Journal was released in September to House Oversight Committee members by lawyers for Mr. Epstein’s estate. The 238-page book was compiled by his then-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been convicted of facilitating Mr. Epstein’s campaign of sexual abuse.
Lawyers for The Journal had asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the article was true. They also argued that it could not be defamatory to Mr. Trump because the conduct described in the article was consistent with his reputation.
Judge Gayles wrote in his decision that Mr. Trump failed to show that The Journal had not investigated the veracity of its claims before publishing the article. The judge noted that The Journal had reached out to Mr. Trump for comment before publication and had informed its readers that Mr. Trump had denied writing the letter.
The lawsuit’s dismissal marks another blow to Mr. Trump’s continued attacks on the press. The president has made no secret of his animus toward the news media and has filed lawsuits in recent months against The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and The Des Moines Register, seeking to punish the outlets over their reporting.
A $15 billion lawsuit against The Times and four of its reporters, as well as the book publisher Penguin Random House, in which Mr. Trump alleged his reputation as a successful businessman was besmirched in a series of articles written in 2024, was dismissed in September. Mr. Trump refiled the lawsuit in October.
Mr. Trump’s history of vitriol against the press has started to hurt him in court, with judges citing those attacks in ruling against the administration in at least three recent cases involving news organizations. On March 31, a federal judge blocked Mr. Trump’s executive order barring the funding of NPR and PBS, ruling that it violated the First Amendment.
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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