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Turning Point Needs Your Help to Unleash Ballot Chasers on Dems
A federal judge on Saturday dismissed President Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for a second time, this time with prejudice, over the paper’s reporting on a birthday letter allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami ruled that the president failed to plausibly allege that the defendants made defamatory statements with “actual malice,” the high legal standard public figures must meet to win a libel case.
“As President Trump has not plausibly alleged that each Defendant made defamatory statements with actual malice, the Amended Complaint must be dismissed,” the ruling stated.
Gayles did not mince words, writing that the president was “grasping at straws” and that the lawsuit attempted to manufacture flaws in the Journal’s investigative reporting.
Because the case was dismissed with prejudice, Trump is barred from refiling the same claims in that court.
Trump’s legal team is not backing down. A spokesperson said the president “will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants.”
The legal battle dates back to July 2025, when the Journal published an article reporting that a 2003 letter bearing Trump’s name appeared in a birthday album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday. The paper reported that the letter included a bawdy drawing.
Trump forcefully denied writing the letter, called it fake and blasted the coverage as “false, malicious, and defamatory.” He sued one day after the story ran, naming Dow Jones, News Corp, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and two Journal reporters as defendants.
In April, Gayles tossed the original complaint, ruling that Trump’s lawyers had not cleared the bar needed to establish their claim. Trump’s team then filed an amended lawsuit, arguing the Journal had been reckless by failing to show how its reporters obtained and verified the letter.
The Journal has maintained throughout that its reporting is accurate. In a 2025 motion to dismiss, the paper argued the article was true, pointing to the fact that Epstein’s estate produced the birthday book in response to a congressional subpoena, and that it contained the letter as the Journal had described. The paper also called the lawsuit an affront to the First Amendment.
The Journal’s original story came as the Trump administration faced intense criticism, including from parts of its own conservative base, over its handling of files related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died in 2019.
The suit is one of several high-profile legal actions Trump has pursued against major media outlets. In 2025, he reached a $16 million settlement with CBS News parent company Paramount Global over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. A federal judge also threw out his $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times that year, though Trump was permitted to file an amended complaint.
It is not yet clear what legal steps Trump’s team intends to take next.
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Turning Point Needs Your Help to Unleash Ballot Chasers on Dems
