U.S. President Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
A federal judge in Florida on Monday dismissed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against media baron Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal, which claimed the newspaper defamed Trump with a story saying the president had sent a “bawdy” 50th birthday letter to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Trump will be given the chance to file a new amended lawsuit in the case about the letter the Journal published in July 2024, Judge Darrin Gayles said in his ruling in U.S. District Court in Miami.
Gayles said he had to dismiss the civil complaint because Trump, who has adamantly denied sending the letter to his then-friend Epstein in 2003, had “not plausibly alleged that the Defendants published the Article with actual malice.”
Plaintiffs who are public figures like Trump must show that a defendant had actual malice when they made allegedly defamatory statements, according to legal precedent.
Gayles said Trump’s complaint “falls short of pleading actual malice,” and also said the president “comes nowhere close to” the standard for showing that the newspaper deliberately avoided investigating the truth of the statements it published about the letter.
“The Article explains that, before running the story, Defendants contacted President Trump, Justice Department officials, and the FBI for comment,” the judge wrote. “President Trump responded with his denial, the Justice Department did not respond at all, and the FBI declined to comment. In short, the Complaint and Article confirm that Defendants attempted to investigate.”
But the judge, in giving Trump a second chance in the case, pointed to another precedent that says a plaintiff “should have the opportunity to amend his complaint” if a lawsuit was tossed out for failing to plead facts in that suit “giving rise to an inference of actual malice.”
The judge’s ruling did not address the question of whether the statements that the Journal made in the article are true, and whether they are defamatory.
Trump plans to refile amended suit on Epstein letter
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement, said, “President Trump will follow Judge Gayles’s ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other Defendants.”
“The President will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People,” the spokesman said.
The White House declined to comment, referring questions to Trump’s legal team.
CNBC has requested comment from the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Murdoch’s company, News Corp.
Lawyers for the defendants had in legal filings said Trump’s case should be dismissed because the article about the letter is true, the article is not defamatory, and because Trump had not shown that the newspaper acted with actual malice.
Letter to Epstein showed outline of woman’s body
The Wall Street Journal published an article on July 17 that said a letter bearing Trump’s signature was included in an album of letters that Epstein was giving for his 50th birthday. The article said Trump sent the letter at the request of Epstein’s close friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who two decades later was convicted of procuring underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
The Journal noted that the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.”
“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” Journal reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo said in the article.
“The letter concludes: ‘Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,'” they wrote.
Trump angrily denied writing the letter, saying, “This is not me. This is a fake thing.”
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” the president said at the time.
A day after the Journal published the article, Trump filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, the two reporters, Murdoch, News Corp., the company’s CEO Robert Thompson, and the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones and Co.
On Sept. 8, Democrats in the House of Representatives released an image of what appeared to be a letter to Epstein signed by Trump, which matched the description of the letter detailed in the Journal’s article. The letter was obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committe after that panel issued a subpoena to Epstein’s estate.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, at the time of the release, said it proved that Trump did not draw the picture or sign it.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 while being held without bail in a Manhattan federal jail. He had been arrested weeks earlier on child sex trafficking charges.
