The dismissal of the lawsuit follows a Wall Street Journal report about a letter allegedly signed by President Trump on Epstein’s 50th birthday.
Published April 13, 2026
A US federal judge has dismissed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch over an article about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Miami-based U.S. District Judge Darrin Gales said Monday that Trump does not meet the “actual malice” standard that public figures must clear in defamation lawsuits.
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This means that public figures must prove not only that a public statement about them was false, but also that the media outlet or person who made it acted with reckless disregard for the truth or should have known it was false.
“This complaint simply falls short of this standard,” Gales wrote. “Quite the opposite.”
The judge noted that Wall Street Journal reporters asked Trump for comment beforehand and published Trump’s denials. The judge said this allowed readers to draw their own conclusions and contradicted Trump’s claims that the paper had acted with actual malice.
Gales said President Trump could file an amended version of the lawsuit by April 27.
In his lawsuit, Trump criticized the birthday greeting he allegedly sent to convicted sex offender Epstein as “fake.” The President of the United States demanded $10 billion for purported defamation. The WSJ’s parent company, News Corp’s Dow Jones & Company, defended the accuracy of the July 17, 2025 article.
Mr. Trump vowed to sue the newspaper and filed suit shortly after the paper shined a new spotlight on his well-documented relationship with Mr. Epstein by publishing an article about a sexually suggestive letter that was signed by Mr. Trump and included in a 2003 album commemorating Mr. Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The letter was subsequently released by the U.S. Congress, which subpoenaed records from Epstein’s estate.
The ruling is a further blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to deal with the fallout from the release of the Epstein files and the president’s attempts to use the legal system to suppress reporting deemed critical of him.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
