A federal judge in Miami has permanently ended Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal, and two of its reporters. US District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the case 'with prejudice' on Saturday, meaning Trump cannot refile. The ruling closes a legal chapter that began when the WSJ published an investigation linking Trump to Jeffrey Epstein through a sexually suggestive birthday note from 2003. The legal standard at issue was 'actual malice' — the requirement under US law that a public figure suing for defamation must prove the publisher knew its reporting was false or acted with reckless disregard for accuracy. Gayles found Trump's complaint fell nowhere near that bar. The judge wrote that Trump's malice allegations were 'conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the Article and often irrelevant,' and accused Trump's legal team of attempting 'to manufacture flaws with the investigation.' The underlying WSJ report, published July 17, 2025, described a birthday letter gifted to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, part of a collection reportedly assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The note attributed to Trump featured typed text framed by a hand-drawn outline of a curvaceous woman, with Trump's signature at the bottom near the pelvic region. Trump denied responsibility for the text, signature, and artwork. A copy was later released through the House Oversight Committee. The article arrived during intense scrutiny over whether the Trump administration had withheld Epstein-related documents despite pledges of transparency. Trump and Epstein had a documented social relationship; Trump has said he ended it after Epstein 'stole' female employees from Mar-a-Lago. Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting a minor for sex, served 13 months, and died in his jail cell in 2019 while facing federal sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide. Legal advocates estimate his victims numbered in the hundreds. Trump filed his original lawsuit on July 18, 2025, one day after publication. After Gayles dismissed the initial complaint in April, Trump refiled in May with an amended version claiming the WSJ had been reckless in not disclosing how reporters obtained and verified the letter. Saturday's ruling rejected this second attempt as well, permanently. The case is structurally significant beyond its headline figure. A sitting president deploying a $10 billion lawsuit against a newspaper over investigative reporting is a direct test of whether litigation costs can substitute for legal merit in suppressing press coverage. The 'actual malice' standard — established in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) — held. But the test itself consumed resources and attention from the defendants for nearly a year. Trump has additional defamation suits pending against the BBC and The New York Times. The pattern — file large-dollar suits against outlets publishing unflattering investigative work, force defendants through costly litigation regardless of merit — remains active even as this particular case is closed.
