A federal judge in Florida threw out President Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch on Monday, finding that Trump hadn’t demonstrated the paper acted with malicious intent in reporting his alleged connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed the case but didn’t slam it shut permanently. Trump can file an amended complaint. That matters. This isn’t done.
The suit traces back to July, when Trump filed against the Journal after it published a story about a sexually suggestive letter the paper said bore his signature. According to the Journal, that letter appeared in a 2003 birthday album put together for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump denied writing it and called the coverage “false, malicious, and defamatory.” The letter eventually came to wider attention after Congress subpoenaed documents from Epstein’s estate and the material surfaced publicly.
Attorneys for the Journal and Murdoch had pushed Gayles to go further, arguing that the article’s statements were simply true and couldn’t support a defamation claim. He didn’t bite. “Whether President Trump was the author of the Letter or Epstein’s friend are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the litigation,” Gayles wrote in his order. The core factual disputes don’t go away just because the case does, at least for now.
Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal, confirmed it’s satisfied with the outcome. “We stand behind the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting,” the spokesperson said, adding that the organization was “pleased” with the judge’s decision. The White House hadn’t responded to a comment request by publication time.
LAIST covered the dismissal, framing it as another setback tied to the Trump administration’s struggle to control the political fallout from its release of Epstein files.
That framing isn’t wrong. The $10 billion figure alone signals that this wasn’t a routine dispute, and the suit fits a recognizable pattern where the administration turns to defamation law when it doesn’t like what reporters publish. First Amendment lawyers have pointed out for years that enormous suits against news organizations don’t have to win in court to cause damage. The costs of defense can be enough to make smaller outlets think twice about pursuing aggressive investigations, even when the underlying journalism is solid.
The Epstein reporting landed during a moment of real political friction. Congress had been demanding the release of Epstein-related documents for months, and Trump had publicly promised a transparent rollout. What actually got released frustrated lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, along with advocates who said the documents were incomplete or sanitized. The Journal’s story hit during that messy stretch, which helps explain why Trump’s response was so fast and so large.
Understanding what Gayles could and couldn’t rule on here requires a bit of background. The controlling standard comes from New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1963 case decided by the Supreme Court in 1964. That ruling set the “actual malice” threshold, meaning public figures like Trump can’t win a defamation claim just by showing a story was wrong. They have to show the publisher knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. That’s a high bar, and it’s the bar Trump didn’t clear here.
The Journal’s lawyers wanted Gayles to declare the reporting true outright. He wouldn’t. The question of who wrote the letter, and what Trump’s relationship with Epstein actually was, can’t be settled on a motion to dismiss. Those are factual questions that require evidence, and that evidence hasn’t been developed in this case yet.
Trump filed the suit in July, almost immediately after the story ran. The speed of the filing, combined with the $10 billion demand, suggested this wasn’t primarily about recovering damages. A spokesperson for Dow Jones confirmed the company’s position hasn’t changed since the story published. The White House offered nothing.
Whether Trump refiles is now the question on the table.