A federal judge dismissed President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, delivering the latest setback in his broader legal campaign against major U.S. news organizations. In an order issued Saturday, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed Trump's suit against the newspaper, its parent companies and two reporters with prejudice, meaning the claims cannot be refiled in their current form.
The lawsuit stemmed from a July 2025 Journal article reporting on a purported birthday letter sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump denied authoring the letter and sued the newspaper, alleging defamation. Gayles ruled that Trump failed, for a second time, to plausibly allege that the defendants acted with "actual malice," the constitutional standard public figures must meet to prevail in defamation cases.
The judge repeatedly cited the landmark Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan, which established heightened protections for press coverage of public officials. "The costs and efforts required to defend a lawsuit ... could chill free speech nearly as effectively as the absence of the actual malice standard altogether," Gayles wrote while explaining why public figures must plausibly allege actual malice at the outset of litigation.
The court also rejected Trump's argument that the Journal acted recklessly by publishing the article after he denied its central claim. "In effect, President Trump argues that once he declared the Letter a 'fake,' Defendants should have disregarded everything else they learned in their investigation and not published the story," Gayles wrote. "But that is not what the actual malice standard requires." The ruling marks one of the most significant court defeats yet for Trump's recent efforts to use defamation litigation against major media outlets.
Trump is suing the BBC in a federal court in Miami regarding a Panorama documentary that spliced together portions of Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech. The suit seeks $5 billion in damages for each of the two counts listed—one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law. While the BBC apologized for the edit, the outlet denies defamation.
"As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case," a BBC spokesperson said in December 2025. Trump has been ordered to sit for a deposition by December 11, and the judge warned Trump this week that the case could be dismissed if he does not produce more relevant documents or evidence showing his legal team's search for them. Three media outlets filed a First Amendment lawsuit in September after Trump banned them from the White House and escorted reporters off the White Houst grounds.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
