Judge permanently dismisses Trump’s $10bn lawsuit against Wall Street Journal

A federal judge has permanently dismissed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch and journalists involved in a report linking Trump to a birthday letter allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein. US District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that Trump’s amended complaint failed to establish the “actual malice” required for a public figure to win a defamation case. Gayles dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.

In his ruling, cited by Al Jazeera, ABC News US and the South China Morning Post, the judge said the complaint was “grasping at straws”. He wrote that its allegations of malice were conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the article and often irrelevant to whether the defendants knew or should have known that the disputed statements were false. The lawsuit followed a Wall Street Journal report published in July 2025 about a sexually suggestive letter and drawing included in a 2003 album assembled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

The letter reportedly bore Trump’s name and ended with a message wishing Epstein that “every day” would be “another wonderful secret”. The reports say Trump denied writing the text, signature or artwork and called the article false, malicious and defamatory. Trump’s lawsuit accused the newspaper and its reporters of knowingly and recklessly publishing false and damaging claims.

It alleged that the article caused overwhelming financial and reputational harm. The judge rejected the argument that the Journal had failed to present Trump’s denial, noting that the article informed readers that he called the letter fake and denied writing it. The ruling applied the standard established by the US Supreme Court in the 1964 New York Times v Sullivan case.

For public figures, that standard requires proof that a defendant published a defamatory statement knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was accurate. Gayles had already dismissed the original lawsuit in April on the ground that Trump had not adequately pleaded actual malice, but allowed him to submit an amended complaint in May. In the new ruling, the judge also said Trump’s legal team appeared to have tried to “manufacture” flaws in the Journal’s investigation.

The South China Morning Post reported that Gayles described the allegations as insufficient to show the defendants had acted with the necessary state of mind. The decision therefore turned on the legal pleading standard, rather than a finding in the supplied reports that the letter’s disputed contents were authentic. The reports place the case within Trump’s wider disputes with media organisations during his second administration.

ABC News US said he is also involved in litigation involving the BBC, the Associated Press and other outlets. Al Jazeera reported that Trump has other ongoing defamation cases against the BBC and The New York Times. The underlying story concerned Trump’s past social relationship with Epstein, who was convicted in Florida in 2008 and later faced federal sex-trafficking charges.

Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 before trial; his death was ruled a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell, who was reportedly involved in compiling the birthday album, is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme.