UPDATED: A federal judge has again dismissed Donald Trump‘s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a letter sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday in 2003.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles wrote in his opinion that Trump’s lawsuit “falls short of pleading actual malice. 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.”
Trump sued the Journal as well as a series of other defendants, including Rupert Murdoch, after it published an article in July, 2025 reporting on the contents of a bawdy letter bearing Trump’s name and included in a “birthday book” compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
In its story, the Journal reported that the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker,” adding that a “pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”
Trump has claimed that he did not compose the letter. The article did include Trump’s denial and that he was preparing to sue. Also named in the lawsuit were parent Dow Jones, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzo.
The judge previously tossed out Trump’s case, concluding that it failed to allege actual malice, but allowed it to be amended. The judge’s latest ruling, though, is with prejudice, meaning the same claim cannot be refiled.
Trump intends to appeal the ruling.
A spokesman for the president’s legal team said the president “will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants. The President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions.”
A spokesperson for Dow Jones said, “We’re pleased with the court’s decision.”
In his opinion, the judge opened with a quote from Justice Louis Brandeis in his concurring opinion in New York Times vs. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that set the precedent for public figures seeking defamation claims. It set the standard that public figures had to prove actual malice, or show that a media outlet published a story with knowledge that it was false or that it was done with reckless disregard for the truth.
Brandeis wrote, “Those who won our independence believed … that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”
In Trump’s revised lawsuit, his attorneys claimed that the Journal reporters “did not have access to any such letter when the Article was published, which is a fact because no authentic letter or drawing exists.” They claimed the journalists “concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity, and to deceptively portray him in a false light.”
The House Oversight Committee later released documents that included a letter matching the Journal‘s description.
Trump’s amended lawsuit pointed to his denials and to statements from Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein associate who is currently serving a sentence for her role in trafficking of underage girls. The lawsuit noted that, in an interview with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and other DOJ officials later in July of 2025, Maxwell had stated that she did not remember submitting a Trump letter for Epstein’s birthday. The Journal story noted that they attempted to reach her, but she did not respond to a request for an interview, and her attorney did not address the letter.
The judge declined to determine whether Trump was the author of the letter, whether the statements in the article are true, and that they were not defamatory. But he rejected Trump’s argument that the Journal’s publication of the story, despite his denials, was evidence of actual malice.
The judge wrote, “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. But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment.”
The judge added that “were that the law, any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press.”
The judge also rejected Trump’s claim that the Journal’s investigation of the letter was inadequate, noting that “a failure to investigate, without more, does not establish actual malice.” But the judge also noted that the Journal reached out to a number of officials, including others named in the Epstein birthday book. Gayles also wrote that the Trump lawsuit references to Maxwell are a “red herring” and do not establish that the Journal reporters harbored “serious doubts” over the story.
The judge wrote that the Journal could file a motion to collect attorneys’ fees.
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