A federal judge in Miami on Saturday permanently dismissed President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch. The suit targeted the newspaper's reporting on a purported birthday letter from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, and the judge ruled that Trump had again failed to plausibly allege that the defendants acted with actual malice.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles issued a 20-page ruling dismissing the amended complaint with prejudice. He wrote that the complaint was grasping at straws and that it tried to manufacture flaws in the Journal's investigation.
This was Trump's second try. Gayles first dismissed the case in April, finding that Trump had not shown the article was published with malicious intent. He allowed the president to file an amended complaint, which Trump did in May. In Saturday's ruling, the judge said that because this was Trump's second attempt to state his claims, dismissal with prejudice was appropriate.
A dismissal with prejudice means the case cannot be refiled. The ruling bars Trump from bringing another federal suit making the same claims against Murdoch and the paper.
The actual malice standard
Public figures who sue for defamation must show actual malice. That means proving a defendant published a false statement knowing it was false, or with reckless disregard for whether it was true. Gayles cited the Supreme Court's 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which set that higher bar for public figures bringing libel claims.
Gayles found that the amended complaint did not meet the standard. He called its malice allegations conclusory and vague, said they were sometimes inconsistent with the article, and said they were often irrelevant to whether the defendants knew or should have known the statements were false. He also noted that the Journal's story did not ignore Trump's denial. Instead, it told readers that Trump called the letter a fake and denied writing it.
The judge rejected each of Trump's main arguments. These included claims that the Journal did not adequately investigate the letter, that it left out relevant details, and that it published the story after Trump and his representatives denied the letter was authentic. Gayles said accepting the last argument would effectively let public figures block unfavorable reporting, which he said would run afoul of the First Amendment. He described the Journal's work as a thoughtful and detailed investigation.
Gayles did not decide whether Trump actually wrote the disputed letter.
What the amended suit claimed
The amended complaint had added new details and claims. One claim was that Murdoch told Trump during a phone call about the article that he would handle it. The revised suit also argued the paper was reckless for not showing how its reporters obtained and verified the letter. It faulted the Journal for not publishing an image of the card in its first story and the paper for not interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell. The article said reporters had written to Maxwell seeking an interview and had included a comment from her attorney.
A spokesperson for Dow Jones & Co., the Journal's publisher, said the company was pleased with the decision. A spokesman for Trump's legal team said the president would keep pressing forward against the Journal and the other defendants and would continue to hold accountable those who, in the spokesman's words, mislead Americans with fake news. The spokesman confirmed Trump plans to appeal.
How the dispute began
The dispute began with a Journal article published on July 17, 2025. It reported that a letter bearing Trump's name was included in an album compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003, and that the letters were collected by Maxwell. The Journal said the letter contained typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman that appeared to be hand-drawn, with a signature reading Donald below her waist.
Trump denied writing the letter and called the story false, malicious and defamatory. He filed suit in federal court in Miami on July 18, 2025. The defendants included the paper, its parent company News Corp, the company's CEO, the reporters who wrote the story and Murdoch. Published accounts put the damages sought at $10 billion or $20 billion.
After the story ran, House lawmakers subpoenaed a redacted version of the birthday book from Epstein's estate, and the House Oversight Committee released a copy of the card. The card matched the Journal's description. Trump and the White House maintain that the document is fake, and then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump did not draw the picture or sign it. The White House has argued the signature looks different from Trump's full signature. Democrats, however, compiled documents Trump signed with only his first name, and those signatures appear very similar to the one on the card.
The Journal's lawyers had argued that the revised suit, like the first one, came nowhere close to showing actual malice. They also said there is nothing inherently defamatory about sending a bawdy letter to a friend. In addition, they argued that the public release of the card showed the story was substantially true.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges, acknowledged assembling the birthday book in an interview last year with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. She said she could not recall whether Trump contributed to it.
Epstein died in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, and his death was ruled a suicide.
The ruling is the latest setback for Trump in his legal fights with news organizations. On Oct. 22, another federal judge in Miami ordered Trump to sit for a deposition by Dec. 11 in his $10 billion defamation suit against the BBC. Trump also has a pending defamation case against The New York Times. Separately, CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing for restored White House access after Trump barred them in mid-September.
