Judge Dismisses Trump's Lawsuit Against The Wall Street Journal With Prejudice Over the Epstein Birthday Letter

A federal judge in Miami dismissed President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, a court filing showed, according to Reuters. U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed the case with prejudice, the Wall Street Journal reported — a second dismissal of the suit, and this time a final one at the trial court: a dismissal with prejudice means the president cannot file the same claims again, although an appeal remains possible.

The lawsuit grew out of the Journal's 2025 reporting that a book given to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 included a letter with typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, signed "Donald," according to the Journal's account of its own story. The article included Trump's assertion that the letter was "a fake thing" and his threat to sue. Trump then sued the Journal's publisher Dow Jones, its parent company News Corp, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson and Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, and two Journal reporters, bringing two defamation claims and asking for at least $10 billion in damages on each, the Journal reported.

Gayles had dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit in April but allowed Trump to refile. In Saturday's ruling, the judge found the revised allegations still fell short of the actual-malice standard a public figure must meet in a defamation case, writing that Trump's allegations "are conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the article, and often irrelevant" to the malice argument, the Journal reported. "The Court agrees that President Trump's defamation claims lack merit," Gayles wrote, according to the Journal. CNN reported that the judge also rejected the argument that the Journal should have withheld its story after Trump denied writing the letter, writing that such a rule would violate the First Amendment: "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."

The case was heard in federal court in Miami, in the Southern District of Florida. The ruling does not decide whether Trump wrote the letter — a point he continues to dispute — it decides that his complaint did not plausibly allege the Journal published with actual malice, the standard set for public figures under the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. Sullivan precedent.