A federal judge in Miami has permanently dismissed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, its parent company Dow Jones, and media magnate Rupert Murdoch, ruling that the president failed to meet the legal standard required to prove defamation. US District Judge Darrin Gayles threw out the case with prejudice on Saturday, meaning Trump cannot refile the same claim. The ruling described the lawsuit as an attempt to “manufacture” flaws in the newspaper’s reporting and said Trump’s legal team was “grasping at straws”.
It was the second time Gayles had dismissed the suit. He first tossed the case in April 2026, but allowed Trump to file an amended complaint addressing the deficiencies. When the revised complaint still failed to plead “actual malice,” the judge closed the door for good.
The Letter at the Heart of the Dispute
The lawsuit stemmed from a Wall Street Journal report published in July 2025 about a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that the newspaper said bore Trump’s name. The letter was allegedly part of a birthday album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, put together by Ghislaine Maxwell. According to the Journal, the note included text framed by the outline of a hand-drawn naked woman and ended with the line: “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret”.
Trump has consistently denied writing or signing the letter, calling the story “false, malicious, and defamatory” and accusing the newspaper of knowingly publishing false information to damage his reputation. The House Oversight Committee last year published a copy of the alleged note bearing the signatures “Donald” and “Jeffrey”.
The Legal Standard
Under US defamation law, public figures like the president must clear a high bar. They must prove not only that a statement was false, but that the publisher knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth, a standard known as “actual malice”. Trump’s lawyers argued that the Journal should have withheld publication after he denied writing the letter. Judge Gayles rejected that argument outright.
“Were that the law, any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press,” he wrote. The judge also noted that a public figure’s denial does not require journalists to abandon the findings of their own investigation, and he praised the Journal’s “thoughtful and detailed investigation” as protected by the First Amendment.
Trump’s Long and Tangled History with Epstein
The lawsuit cannot be understood outside the broader controversy over Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Trump and Epstein socialized extensively in the 1990s and 2000s, moving in the same wealthy circles in Palm Beach and New York.
In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine, Trump said he had known Epstein for about 15 years and described him as a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with,” adding that Epstein liked women “on the younger side”. A New York Times investigation published in December 2025 found that beginning in the late 1980s, the two men forged a bond intense enough to leave others who knew them with the impression that they were each other’s closest friend.
Trump has repeatedly said he broke off ties with Epstein in the early 2000s, before Epstein’s 2008 plea deal on prostitution charges. But documents released by the Justice Department in early 2026 indicate that the two maintained contact until at least 2012, contradicting Trump’s account. The files included photos of Trump with several women whose faces were redacted, and an email in which Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls,” though the context and meaning of that remark remain unclear.
The Justice Department has cautioned that the material could include fake images or untrue allegations, and the acting attorney general said the files did not amount to evidence of criminal sexual activity by those named. There is no publicly available evidence implicating Trump in Epstein’s abuse or trafficking of minors, and Trump has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Why Sue the Wall Street Journal?
The decision to sue the Journal, rather than simply deny the story and move on shows a pattern that has defined Trump’s relationship with the press throughout his second term. Legal analysts who spoke with CNN said they could not recall another instance of a sitting president suing a news outlet over a story, but noted that it fits a recognizable strategy: using the courts to pressure media organizations over unflattering coverage.
Trump has also filed a $15 billion defamation case against The New York Times over its coverage of his 2024 campaign. The Journal lawsuit was unusual not only because it was brought by a sitting president, but because it sought an extraordinary sum, originally $20 billion, later reduced to $10 billion against one of the most storied newspapers in the country and its billionaire owner. By suing, Trump forced the Journal to defend its reporting in court, generated headlines that cast him as the victim of a hostile press, and signalled to his base that he was fighting back against what he characterizes as a “Democrat hoax”. The fact that the case was dismissed twice, and ultimately with prejudice, does not erase the political utility of having filed it in the first place.
Epstein Files and the Midterms
The ruling lands at a politically sensitive moment. The Justice Department’s release of nearly 3.5 million pages of Epstein-related documents in January and February 2026 rattled American politics, exposing the ties of numerous prominent figures to the disgraced financier and raising uncomfortable questions about the justice system’s treatment of the wealthy and powerful. Trump’s name appears more than 1,000 times in the files, according to multiple US media reports, and the controversy has shaken his grip on his base like no other issue. A majority of Americans, 60 percent, disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files, including more than one in four Republicans.
The White House has sought to move past the story, with Trump urging Americans to “focus on other things” after the document release, but the issue refuses to fade. The lawsuit against the Journal was, in part, an attempt to seize the narrative to reframe the story from one about Trump’s ties to Epstein into one about a president standing up to a lying press. That attempt has now failed in court, but the political battle over the Epstein files is far from over.
Trump’s legal team has indicated it will appeal the ruling, and a spokesman said the president “will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit”. Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, said it was “pleased with the court’s decision”. The dismissal with prejudice is a significant legal setback, but it is unlikely to be the final word in the broader confrontation between Trump and the media.