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The ruling was a resounding defeat of Trump’s repeated efforts to silence media coverage he doesn’t like.
A federal judge on Saturday dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over the paper’s reporting on his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles tossed the suit in a Saturday afternoon order, saying the president failed to prove that The Journal had “acted with actual malice.”
Trump initially filed the defamation suit in July 2025 over a report on Trump’s alleged “bawdy” birthday message to Epstein in 2003, which the president claimed was “a FAKE letter.” The president denied writing the letter, and sued the publication for $10 billion in damages.
The president argued that because he said he did not write the letter, the Journal should not have published the article. Gayles disagreed, saying such action would violate the First Amendment.
“Were that the law, any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press,” Gayles wrote in his order.
The judge quoted Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ opinion in The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan ruling, a landmark case that serves as the basis for libel law and protects freedom of speech and press.
“Justice Brandeis’s words, as relevant today as they were nearly a century ago, formed the ‘background’ behind the Supreme Court’s holding in Sullivan: the First Amendment ‘prohibits a public [figure] from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood . . . unless he proves that the statement was made with actual malice,’” Gayles wrote.
When asked for comment, the White House referred MS NOW to “personal counsel” for the president. The ruling was a resounding defeat for Trump, who has repeatedly tried to silence media coverage he doesn’t like.
Trump’s initial lawsuit was tossed out in April 2026 without prejudice, meaning Trump was able to amend it and re-file. The president’s amended complaint has now been tossed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled again.
Gayles found that Trump did not sufficiently allege that the Murdoch-owned news organization and two of its reporters acted with “actual malice” in publishing the story.
“As with his first attempt, he has failed,” Gayles wrote in the order.
Selena Kuznikov is a desk associate at MS NOW covering politics in Washington, D.C.