Judge tosses Trump’s defamation lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein claims

A federal judge dismissed President Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal on Monday, saying he failed to prove the newspaper acted with malice when it published claims linking him to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles, an Obama appointee to the court in Miami, said Mr. Trump could try to refresh his lawsuit with more evidence, but for now he found no legal fault with The Journal’s article. Indeed, by including Mr. Trump’s denials, The Journal allowed readers to decide for themselves what to conclude.

“Because President Trump has not plausibly alleged that defendants published the article with actual malice, both counts must be dismissed,” the judge wrote.

The case, Trump v. Murdoch, saw the president go to battle against one of the conservative news world’s largest names, Rupert Murdoch, who owns The Journal.

Mr. Trump challenged a piece last summer that said a letter bearing his signature was part of a 50th birthday album Ghislaine Maxwell put together for Epstein in 2003. The newspaper said the signature, placed at the bottom of the torso of a hand-drawn outline of a woman’s body, was “mimicking pubic hair.”

Mr. Trump had previously denied writing a letter and, in his lawsuit, called the letter a “fake.”

He said the reporters showed “glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting.” He demanded damages “not to be less than $10 billion dollars[sic].”

For a public figure to win a defamation lawsuit, he must prove that the information was wrong and his opponent had “malice” in publishing it.

Judge Gayles said The Journal followed normal journalistic practice in investigating the letter, including contacting Mr. Trump, the Justice Department and the FBI. The FBI declined to comment and the Justice Department didn’t respond, the newspaper reported.

Mr. Trump provided a denial for the story, saying he didn’t “draw pictures of women” and “it’s not my language.” He promised a lawsuit.

The judge said Mr. Trump argued the newspaper had ill will toward him but failed to show the malice required to sustain a defamation case.

“In short, the complaint and article confirm that defendants attempted to investigate,” Judge Gayles wrote.

Mr. Trump, on social media, said he will take the judge up on the offer to revive the lawsuit.

“Our powerful case against The Wall Street Journal, and other defendants, was asked to be refiled by the judge,” he said. “It is not a termination.”

Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting underage girls for sex in 2008 and was facing charges of sex trafficking when he committed suicide in jail in 2019.

Mr. Trump’s relationship with Epstein has dogged him throughout both of his terms as president. 

He has acknowledged knowing Epstein but says he didn’t know of the disgraced sex offender’s activities, and he banned Epstein from his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, in 2007 over his boorish behavior.

Mr. Trump has had a mixed record in his legal battles against the media.

He has a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times that is still pending. His first complaint in that case was dismissed because the judge found it to be an unprofessional political screed.

He gave Mr. Trump a chance at a do-over and the case has been assigned to a mediator.

Mr. Trump’s lawsuits against ABC and the firm that owned CBS fared better, with both ending in settlements and payouts to his presidential library for their coverage of Mr. Trump.

He had challenged CBS’s “60 Minutes” program over how it edited an interview with his 2024 election opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and challenged ABC over an erroneous claim that Mr. Trump had been found liable for raping a woman. In fact, the civil lawsuit found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse but not rape.

ABC paid out $15 million to the Trump library. Paramount, CBS’s owner, agreed to pay $16 million.

In the Journal defamation case, Mr. Trump’s lawyer said the $10 billion figure he’s seeking accounts for the millions of views the article and its claims got online, including on social media.