A federal judge has again dismissed Donald Trump‘s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a letter sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday in 2003.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles wrote in his opinion that Trump’s lawsuit “falls short of pleading actual malice. 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.”
Trump sued the Journal as well as a series of other defendants, including Rupert Murdoch, after it published an article in 2025 reporting on the contents of a bawdy letter bearing Trump’s name and included in a “birthday book” compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
In its story, the Journal reported that the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker,” adding that a “pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”
Trump has claimed that he did not compose the letter. The article did include Trump’s denial that he composed the letter, and that he was preparing to sue. Also named in the lawsuit were parent Dow Jones, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzo.
The judge previously tossed out Trump’s case, concluding that it failed to allege actual malice, but allowed it to be amended. The judge’s latest ruling, though, is with prejudice, meaning the same claim cannot be refiled.
Trump intends to appeal the ruling.
A spokesman for the president’s legal team said the president “will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants. The President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions.”
In his opinion, the judge opened with a quote from Justice Louis Brandeis in his concurring opinion in New York Times vs. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that set the precedent for public figures seeking defamation claims. It set the standard that public figures had to prove actual malice, or that a media outlet published a story with knowledge that it was false or that it was done with reckless disregard for the truth.
Brandeis wrote, “Those who won our independence believed … that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”
More to come.
