Policy & Law
Judge Dismisses Trump’s Lawsuit Against Wall Street Journal Over Epstein Letter
A U.S. federal judge in Miami on Saturday dismissed with prejudice President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against media mogul Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal over a 2025 article reporting on a sexually suggestive letter allegedly sent by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that Trump had again failed to show that the defendants acted with “actual malice,” a legal standard required for defamation claims by public figures. “The Amended Complaint falls short of pleading actual malice,” Gayles wrote. “Indeed, the allegations regarding malice are conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the Article and often irrelevant to whether Defendants knew or should have known that the statements in the Article were purportedly false.”