Judge dismisses Trump suit against Wall Street Journal, Murdoch over Epstein letter

A federal judge Saturday tossed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, over a story reporting Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Big picture view:

U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami said the president was "grasping at straws," ruling that Trump did not prove that the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice, proof of which would be required to prevail. 

The ruling stated that the lawsuit had attempted to "manufacture" flaws in the investigative reporting by The Wall Street Journal, according to the Associated Press. 

Gayles dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning Trump cannot file it again. 

"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."

Gayles also said the paper’s story neither ignored nor minimized Trump’s denial. 

"Rather, it informed readers that President Trump decried the letter as a fake and denied writing it."

Gayles also called other allegations in the lawsuit meritless.

The White House did not immediately react publicly to Saturday's decision.

Dig deeper:

The lawsuit focused on a story the Journal published last year describing a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that the paper said included Trump’s name. The letter, the paper reported, was part of a 2003 album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly collected the letter as part of the album years before he was first arrested in 2006 and later parted ways with the president. 

The letter that bore Trump’s name included text framed by the outline of what appeared to be a hand-drawn naked woman. The paper reported that the letter ended with the message, "Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret."

Trump said he did not write the letter and called the story "false, malicious, and defamatory."

The lawsuit accused the paper and its reporters of having "knowingly and recklessly" published "numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements." Those statements, the suit claimed, caused Trump "overwhelming financial and reputational harm." 

Epstein died in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Authorities ruled his death a suicide.

Timeline:

Gayles dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit in April, ruling that Trump did not make the argument that the paper did not publish the article with the intent to be malicious. But at that time, Gayles gave Trump a chance to file a revised complaint.

The amended complaint was then filed in May.

In Gayle’s order on Saturday that dismissed the refiled suit, he cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which raised the bar for public figures to be able to win libel suits by requiring that a media outlet knowingly published something false or showed "a reckless disregard" for the truth. 

"The Amended Complaint falls short of pleading actual malice," Gayles wrote.

 

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