Ten billion dollars. That is the sum President Donald Trump demanded from the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch for the crime of publishing a story he did not like. On Monday, a federal judge in Florida told him no.

US District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed Trump’s defamation lawsuit over a July 2025 article describing a sexually suggestive letter the newspaper said bore Trump’s signature, sent to Jeffrey Epstein for the disgraced financier’s 50th birthday album in 2003. The ruling is a victory for press freedom — and a rebuke to a sitting president who has repeatedly turned the courts into instruments for punishing unfavorable coverage.

The Letter at the Center

The Wall Street Journal’s story, published July 17, 2025, carried the headline: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” It described a letter containing a drawing of a naked woman with Trump’s signature below her waist and the message: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Trump denied authoring the letter and called the story “false, malicious, and defamatory.” He had personally called Murdoch — one of his most prominent media allies — in an attempt to kill the piece before publication, according to The Guardian. When that failed, he sued.

The lawsuit named both Dow Jones, the News Corp division that publishes the Journal, and Murdoch himself. The $10 billion figure made it one of the largest defamation claims ever filed by a sitting head of state against a news organization.

The Legal Standard

Judge Gayles ruled that Trump had not “plausibly alleged” that the Journal published the article with “actual malice” — the legal threshold for defamation claims brought by public figures, established by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision. Actual malice means the publisher knew the information was false or acted with reckless disregard for its accuracy.

The judge found significant evidence that the Journal had sought to verify whether the drawing was genuine, according to The Guardian’s account of the ruling. Trump’s assertion that the letter was fake, Gayles wrote, did not demonstrate that the newspaper acted “with serious doubts” about the story.

The judge also noted that Trump’s legal team had not provided evidence of special damages.

The dismissal was without prejudice, giving Trump until April 27 to refile with additional evidence. His team has already pledged to do so. “President Trump will follow Judge Gayles’s ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement.

Trump himself characterized the ruling on Truth Social not as a loss but as procedural guidance. “It is not a termination, it is a suggested re-filing,” he wrote.

A spokesperson for Dow Jones said the organization was “pleased” with the decision and stood behind “the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting.”

A Broader Pattern

The Epstein connection has long been a political vulnerability for Trump, and the congressional release of records from Epstein’s estate has kept the issue in the headlines. The House oversight committee released the letter described in the Journal’s story in September 2025 after subpoenaing it from Epstein’s estate, according to The Guardian and the Associated Press.

But the lawsuit also fits a broader pattern. Trump maintains an active defamation lawsuit against the BBC over the editing of a documentary, The Guardian reports. His administration has faced First Amendment lawsuits from multiple media organizations, the Guardian reports.

For readers outside the United States, the case will look familiar: a powerful figure using the legal system to pressure independent journalism. What distinguishes the American version is the institutional speed bump. The actual malice standard, which has protected US publishers for over six decades, once again forced a plaintiff to meet a high evidentiary bar before a defamation claim can proceed.

Whether refiling succeeds where the original complaint failed is another question. The judge left the door ajar, but Trump’s legal team now has two weeks to produce evidence they did not present in round one. A $10 billion lawsuit without documented damages is, at minimum, an uphill argument.

For now, the ruling stands as a marker: the courts remain a line of defense when a president tries to convert personal grievance into legal action. The Wall Street Journal published its story. A judge said that was its right. What Trump actually wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 remains unanswered — and no lawsuit has yet resolved it.

Sources