A judge threw out Donald Trump’s $10 billion libel suit against the Wall Street Journal and parent company News Corp., dealing a blow to the president’s ongoing campaign of litigation against the media.
The decision Monday in federal court in Miami largely vindicates a 2025 story that suggested Trump sent a lewd birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein more than two decades ago. The judge said the complaint failed to meet the legal standard for a defamation suit but gave Trump until April 27 to file a new complaint.
Trump sued over a July 17 story that said he’d sent a “bawdy” birthday note to Epstein in 2003, typed within a sketched outline of a naked woman and signed with the president’s signature in the pubic area. The note ends with: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has repeatedly claimed the note is fake.
The president’s complaint “comes nowhere close” to meeting the legal standard for public figures to allege defamation, US District Judge Darrin Gayles said in his ruling. Such lawsuits must show that an article was published with “actual malice,” meaning the publication knew it was false or recklessly disregarded the possibility that it might be.
“Quite the opposite,” Gayles said. “The article explains that, before running the story, defendants contacted President Trump, Justice Department officials, and the FBI for comment. President Trump responded with his denial, the Justice Department did not respond at all, and the FBI declined to comment. In short, the complaint and article confirm that defendants attempted to investigate.”
The judge did not rule on whether the story was defamatory and said it was too early to determine if Trump had actually written the birthday note.
“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 spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “The president will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in fake news to mislead the American people.”
News Corp. didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The ruling could be a bellwether for Trump’s other lawsuits against the media, which he has broadly accused of covering his presidency unfairly. In addition to his suit against the Journal, Trump also has multibillion-dollar defamation suits pending against the British Broadcasting Corp. and the New York Times, both of which deny wrongdoing.
Trump, whose past friendship with Epstein has dogged his presidency, has said he was never aware of the financier’s sex crimes and cut ties with him long before they came to light. Last week, First Lady Melania Trump also made a rare public speech denying ties with Epstein, whose 2019 death in federal custody was ruled a suicide.
The note over which Trump sued was compiled with other letters into a “birthday book” for the financier’s 50th birthday. The book, including Trump’s note, was later handed over by Epstein’s estate in response to a congressional subpoena.
Trump’s suit against the Journal also named publisher Dow Jones & Co. and News Corp. Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch. The defendants argued that Trump’s lawsuit was an attempt to chill the media’s criticism of his presidency, and that he’d failed to provide evidence showing the story was false.
The Wall Street Journal story about the Epstein birthday book and Trump’s alleged signature was published amid a firestorm of criticism over the Trump administration’s handling of documents from the financier’s criminal case.
Millions of pages of those documents have since been released under a transparency law passed by Congress, though critics have accused the Justice Department of continuing to withhold others. The department’s handling of the Epstein controversy was said to be a factor in Trump’s firing of former US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
News Corp. asked a judge to dismiss the suit in September, arguing that the accuracy of the disputed article was bolstered when the Epstein estate gave the note to the House committee investigating the deceased financier’s sex-trafficking. The committee then made the note public.
Trump had argued that he should be permitted to continue with the case because the Wall Street Journal hasn’t been able to prove definitively that the birthday note was genuine, regardless of its release by the House committee.
The president has regularly sued news outlets. His New York Times suit accuses the paper of serving as a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party and demands $15 billion in damages. He sued the BBC for $10 billion over a misleading edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech that suggested he directly called for violence on the day his supporters attacked the US Capitol. Both news outlets deny wrongdoing and are seeking dismissal of the lawsuits.
Both ABC and CBS settled Trump defamation suits over coverage of the 2024 election for about $16 million each.
Photo: US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media in July, 2025. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
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