A federal judge on Saturday dismissed President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, declaring that the president was "grasping at straws" in his challenge to a story about his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami threw out the case with prejudice, a permanent dismissal that bars it from being refiled. He ruled that Trump did not prove the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice, as the law requires, and said the lawsuit had tried to "manufacture" flaws in the Journal's investigative reporting.
The suit stemmed from a story the paper published last year describing a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that it said bore Trump's name and appeared in a 2003 album assembled for Epstein's 50th birthday. The letter was reportedly collected by disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell as part of the birthday album, years before Epstein was first arrested in 2006 and later had a falling-out with Trump.
According to the newspaper, the letter bearing Trump's name contains text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and closes with the words "Happy Birthday" along with a wish that "every day be another wonderful secret." Trump denied writing the letter and called the story "false, malicious, and defamatory."
The complaint, filed in federal court in Miami, accused the paper and its reporters of having "knowingly and recklessly" published "numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements," alleging the coverage caused "overwhelming financial and reputational harm" to the president.
Gayles had dismissed the suit once before, in April, finding that Trump had failed to argue the article was published with malicious intent, but he gave the president an opportunity to file an amended complaint, which Trump did in May. In Saturday's ruling, the judge pointed to the Supreme Court's landmark 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which made it harder for public figures to win libel cases by requiring proof that an outlet knowingly published false information or showed reckless disregard for the truth.
"The Amended Complaint falls short of pleading actual malice," Gayles wrote. "Indeed, the allegations regarding malice are conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the Article, and often irrelevant to whether Defendants knew or should have known that the statements in the Article were purportedly false."
The judge also observed that the Journal's story did not ignore or downplay Trump's denial, writing: "Rather, it informed readers that President Trump decried the Letter as a fake and denied writing it." Several other allegations in the lawsuit were without merit as well, he said.
The dismissal amounts to a setback for Trump and his administration, which have maintained adversarial relationships with news organizations during his second term. Beyond the Journal, Trump is entangled in litigation involving the BBC and The Associated Press, and more recently CNN, MS NOW and Politico, which are suing him to restore their access after he banished them from the White House in mid-September. Trump routinely denounces outlets whose coverage he objects to as "fake news" and insults their journalists.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
