Federal Judge Dismisses Trump's Lawsuit Over WSJ's Epstein 'Birthday Letter' Report

US District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed President Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal (Center bias) and three journalists, its parent company Dow Jones, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch on Saturday. Gayles ruled that the Journal's 2025 report on a suggestive birthday letter that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 is protected under the US Constitution's Freedom of the Press.

The Details: Gayles dismissed the suit with prejudice, meaning that it cannot be refiled or disputed. His ruling concluded that the lawsuit attempted to "manufacture" flaws in the Journal's reporting and did not prove the defendants acted with "actual malice" to defame Trump, as required by the federal law under "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan." He highlighted that the Journal's report "informed readers that President Trump decried the letter as a fake."

Key Quotes: "President Trump argues that once he declared the letter a 'fake,' Defendants should have disregarded everything else they learned in their investigation and not published the story," Gayles wrote in his 20-page ruling. "But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment." He said that ruling in favor of Trump would set a precedent that "any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press."

Trump's lawyers said, "Authorship is not merely something Defendants cannot prove – it is something they never even attempted to prove. They never identified the source of the letter, authenticated the signature, or explained how they attributed the typewritten text to President Trump."

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How The Media Covered It: Outlets on the left, such as Associated Press (Lean Left), more prominently highlighted Gayles' reasoning behind the dismissal. AP reported, "The letter was reportedly collected by disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell as part of a birthday album for Epstein years before he was first arrested in 2006 and subsequently had a falling-out with Trump." However, Washington Examiner (Lean Right) noted, "[Trump] stated that he cut off ties with Epstein years before Epstein's initial arrest."

The Examiner called the letter "crude" but did not report on its specific contents – a bias by omission. It instead pointed to "several omitted details in the [Wall Street Journal] story, such as how the defendants obtained a copy of the alleged birthday letter." However, the Press and BBC (Center) also exhibited biases of omission, as neither included the context that Gayles is an Obama-appointed judge nor gave voice to Trump's lawyers.

For Context: The Journal's exclusive report in September 2025 described the suggestive messages, released by members of the House Oversight Committee:

Trump called the report "false, malicious, and defamatory," filing an initial $20 billion lawsuit that Gayles dismissed in April. He filed the final amended lawsuit in May.

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