A federal judge in Florida dismissed President Donald Trump’s revised $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over a 2025 story detailing a purported 2003 birthday card sent to Jeffrey Epstein, nbcnews.com reported.
Dismissal With Prejudice and the Legal Standard of Actual Malice
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that Trump’s amended complaint suffered from the same fatal flaw as his initial attempt. The court found that the suit fell short of the high legal threshold required to prove that the newspaper published the report with actual malice.
🇺🇸 Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal is over.A federal judge has thrown out his second attempt to sue the newspaper over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Trump wanted at least $10 billion, claiming the story defamed him.But the judge… pic.twitter.com/msKedMDfFU
In his 20-page ruling, Gayles wrote that the amended complaint grasped at straws to manufacture flaws in the newspaper’s reporting. Because this marked Trump’s second attempt to plead his claims, the judge determined that dismissing the lawsuit with prejudice was appropriate, meaning the claims cannot be refiled in that district court.
To succeed in a defamation claim as a public figure, a plaintiff must demonstrate that a publisher made a false statement with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth. Gayles opened his opinion by citing Justice Louis Brandeis’s concurring opinion in the landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling New York Times v. Sullivan, emphasizing the foundational protection of public discussion under the First Amendment.
The Disputed 2003 Birthday Card and Subsequent Investigations
The legal battle stems from an article published on July 17, 2025, regarding a birthday book assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. According to the original reporting, the volume included a card featuring a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, with a squiggly “Donald” written below the waist to mimic pubic hair, alongside a typewritten note depicting an imaginary conversation with Epstein.
Trump denied authoring or sending the note, maintaining that the document was a fake and that the signature did not match his distinctive full signature. His legal team argued that the Journal should have known the story was false because Trump said it was not true, and criticized the publication for initially omitting an image of the card.
The House Oversight Committee later publicly released a copy of the card obtained directly from the Epstein estate, matching the description provided in the initial reporting. In his ruling, Gayles rejected the argument that publishing a story after receiving a subject’s denial amounts to actual malice, noting that accepting such a logic would effectively allow public figures to block unfavorable reporting altogether.
Legal Fallout and Planned Appeals
Lawyers for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones argued throughout the proceedings that sending a bawdy letter to a friend does not constitute defamation, and that the article made clear that Trump’s friendship with Epstein ended years before Epstein was charged with sex crimes. Representatives for Dow Jones expressed satisfaction with the court’s decision.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team confirmed plans to appeal the ruling, stating that the president intends to press forward with the litigation to hold news organizations accountable.
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