MIAMI.- A federal judge in Miami on Saturday permanently threw out President Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch over a report about an alleged birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, ruling that the president failed to prove the newspaper acted with actual malice.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. In his ruling, Gayles said the president was "grasping at straws" and that the lawsuit had attempted to "manufacture" flaws in the Journal's investigative reporting.
The Epstein letter at the center of the case
The lawsuit targeted a Journal report published last year describing a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that the newspaper said bore Trump's name and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump sued the Journal, its parent company Dow Jones and Murdoch, accusing them of defamation.
Gayles ruled that the amended complaint fell short of pleading actual malice, the legal standard public figures must meet under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan: that a publication knowingly printed false statements or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
The second dismissal this year
Saturday's ruling was the second time Gayles dismissed the case. He first threw it out in April, finding that Trump had failed to argue the article was published with malicious intent, but he allowed the president to file an amended complaint, which was submitted in May. That revised filing has now also been dismissed, and unlike the first dismissal, this one closes the door to another amended version.
The ruling lands three days before the November 3 midterm elections, in a campaign in which Trump has repeatedly attacked the press and the courts. It also closes, at least in this federal case, one of the most high-profile media lawsuits of his second term: a $10 billion claim over a single reported letter that the Journal has stood by.
Fuentes: Associated Press, 1 de noviembre de 2026; The Times of India, 1 de noviembre de 2026; Malay Mail, 1 de noviembre de 2026; The Economic Times, 1 de noviembre de 2026.