UPDATE: Judge dismisses Trump’s $10 billion Epstein lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal
On Monday, a federal judge dismissed Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit alleged that the Wall Street Journal defamed Trump when it reported on a bawdy letter allegedly authored by Trump in 2003 in celebration of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday.
According to Trump’s lawsuit, the letter, which includes a line drawing of a naked woman, was “fake and nonexistent,” and the Wall Street Journal “concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light.”
The alleged letter, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, is structured as an imagined dialogue between Trump and Epstein. “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” Trump says. “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” The letter concludes: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
In a 17-page order, Judge Darrin Gayles found that, even assuming everything in Trump’s complaint is true, Trump’s lawsuit “comes nowhere close” to meeting the standard for defamation. Gayles does not weigh in on whether the 2003 Trump letter was genuine, but notes that the lawsuit fails to establish that the reporters acted with “actual malice.”
Specifically, Gayles notes that the reporters reached out to Trump and others for comment, and printed Trump’s denial that he authored the letter in the piece. This showed that the reporters both investigated the letter’s authenticity and allowed readers to draw their own conclusions.
At this stage, Gayles did not even consider the most damning fact about the lawsuit. The same letter featured in the WSJ report was provided to the House Oversight Committee by the Epstein estate in response to a subpoena. This directly undermines Trump’s claim that the letter was simply invented by the WSJ reporters, who do not control the Epstein estate’s archives. While Gayles did not consider the letter obtained by the House Oversight Committee, he does note that “the produced documents certainly appear identical to the album and Letter referenced in the Article.”
The lawsuit is not officially dead yet. Gayles dismissed the case “without prejudice,” which means that Trump can refile the case and attempt to allege facts that meet the actual malice standard. “President Trump will follow Judge Gayles’s ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other Defendants,” a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. “The President will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People.”
It is unclear what allegations could credibly be added to the complaint to meet the actual malice standard. If Trump’s attorneys were aware of such facts, they would have been included in the original complaint.
The dismissal is the latest in a series of damaging blows to the lawsuit and Trump’s contention that the letter was fake. Trump initially said the letter was not written by him because it’s “not the way I talk.” This was echoed by Vice President JD Vance, who posted, “Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?”
But Popular Information illustrated that many of the distinctive elements of the letter — including “enigma,” “pal,” and referring to himself in third person — were frequently used by Trump.
Alternatively, Trump said that the letter could not be from him because he does not “draw pictures.” That claim is definitively false. “It takes me a few minutes to draw something, in my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then sign my name, but it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York through the Capuchin Food Pantries Ministry,” Trump wrote in his 2008 book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success.
While Trump is eager to turn the page on the Epstein controversy, the administration has still not released dozens of pages related to the allegations of a woman who alleges that Trump sexually assaulted her as a minor.
Melania Trump thrust the Epstein issue back into the headlines last week when she delivered an unusual statement from the White House denying she had a close relationship with Epstein or his criminal accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. In a 2002 email to Maxwell, Melania is friendly and warm, referring to Maxwell as “G” and signing the email “Love, Melania.” In Maxwell’s response, she refers to Melania as “sweet pea.”
This would have been the inevitable outcome for Trump's bullshit lawsuits against ABC and CBS as well had they chosen not to cave to the bully. He is, and always has been, a full of shit bully and he always loses to those who stand up to him...as long as they have the resources to do so. Never forget that he built his whole tacky empire in New York on the backs of contractors and partners that he stiffed who could not afford to fight him.
The WSJ should move for sanctions against trump and the lawyer who filed rhis case. It’s clearly an attempted fraud and should lead to the attorney being disbarred and trump paying triple damages to the WSJ