Judge signals Trump’s defamation lawsuit against Wall Street Journal may be dismissed again

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch looks on as Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during proclamation signings and appointments inside the Oval Office at the White House on 3 February 2025. Photograph: Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenMedia mogul Rupert Murdoch looks on as Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during proclamation signings and appointments inside the Oval Office at the White House on 3 February 2025. Photograph: Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty ImagesWall Street JournalJudge signals Trump’s defamation lawsuit against Wall Street Journal may be dismissed againObama-appointed judge seemed unmoved by Trump attorneys’ arguments in case also naming Murdoch

A federal judge in Florida seemed skeptical of arguments from Donald Trump’s legal team on Wednesday over whether the court should allow a $10bn defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal to move forward.

Trump sued the Journal and the News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch over a July 2025 article about a “bawdy” letter reportedly from Trump that was included in a 2003 birthday book for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has denied authoring or signing the letter, and his attorneys have argued that the Journal published the story despite having been told it was false.

US district court judge Darrin P Gayles initially dismissed the case in April, arguing that Trump’s attorneys had not sufficiently pleaded actual malice, the legal standard needed to win a defamation case, but he gave Trump an opportunity to refile the lawsuit. The president’s legal team refiled the suit in May.

Representing the president, attorney Alejandro Brito, who is also handling the president’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC, argued that the Journal “didn’t follow journalistic standards sufficient to making the claims”.

“The defendants did not and could not have [done] the investigations to make the definitive statements in this article,” Brito said in a Miami courtroom on Wednesday.

Furthermore, he said that only four people could attest to the veracity of the letter: Trump, who has denied it; Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019; the bookbinder, who is also deceased; and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who said she does not recall who participated in the birthday book project.

But the judge seemed particularly skeptical that Trump was financially harmed by the Journal’s publication, saying his lawyer’s claims seemed “rather conclusory”.

Brito responded that Trump’s team did not need to specify financial harm and had “done enough at this stage”.

Lawyers representing Murdoch, the Journal and parent company News Corp argued that Trump’s team had made no headway in their attempts to prove that the president was defamed by the story, headlined “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”

“The amended complaint is no better than the original complaint,” said Andrew J Levander, an attorney representing the defendants. “It is time for this baseless lawsuit to come to an end. You gave the plaintiff a roadmap to fix this case and he couldn’t do it.”

Lawyers for the defendants argued that Trump’s legal team mischaracterized the article and that the Journal could not be expected, as a matter of journalistic prerogative, to refrain from publishing an article simply because of the president’s denial.