Judge drops Trump's $10B suit against Journal
A Miami federal judge ruled the president failed to prove actual malice in the defamation case.
By Salma Farouk ·
A federal judge in Miami permanently dismissed Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
District Judge Darrin Gayles issued the ruling with prejudice, which bars Trump from filing the same claim again.
The decision ends a legal fight that began over a story published in 2025. That article described a letter and a drawing attributed to Trump. Both items appeared in a 2003 birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell compiled the album before Epstein's first arrest in 2006. The letter featured text surrounded by a hand-drawn outline of a nude woman. It ended with the phrase "Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret," according to the newspaper.
Trump denied writing the note. He called the reporting "false, malicious and defamatory" in his original complaint.
Gayles found that Trump did not prove the defendants acted with actual malice. This is the standard required for public figures to win defamation cases under the 1964 Supreme Court ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
"The amended complaint fails to plead actual malice," Gayles wrote in the order. He noted that the claims regarding malice were generic and vague. He also said they were often inconsistent with the article itself.
The judge rejected the argument that the Journal ignored Trump's denial. The ruling stated that the article told readers Trump called the letter false and denied authorship.
Trump's legal team had amended the suit in May after Gayles first dismissed the case in April. The original complaint accused the paper and its reporters of publishing false statements with reckless disregard for the truth.
The lawsuit targeted The Wall Street Journal and media magnate Rupert Murdoch. It sought damages for what Trump's team described as overwhelming financial and reputational harm.
This ruling is part of a wider pattern of legal disputes between Trump's administration and news outlets. The White House is currently involved in separate suits with the BBC, the Associated Press, and CNN. It also faces a case from MS NOW and Politico after they were removed from the White House in September.
The White House did not immediately comment on the Saturday decision. Epstein died in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
