A federal judge has once again dismissed President Donald Trump’s defamation claims against the Wall Street Journal over a 2025 report by the paper that a 2003 birthday letter to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was purportedly written by Trump. Trump’s lawsuit “falls short of pleading actual malice,” wrote U.S. Gayles in his opinion on Saturday.
In April, Judge Gayles ruled that the lawsuit “fails to adequately allege actual malice,” a legal standard in the U.S. for proving defamation. At the time, the court dismissed the complaint “without prejudice,” since he had only made one attempt to state his claims. Trump sought at least $20 billion in damages on two counts of defamation in the initial suit, filed in July 2025.
He sued the WSJ, its parent companies Dow Jones & Co. and News Corp, the reporters on the story and Rupert Murdoch.
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