The key facts
- Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against WSJ, Dow Jones and Rupert Murdoch
- The court found that the plaintiff failed to prove
- This is the second dismissal: the first version of the lawsuit seeking $20 billion was dismissed in April, after which the suit was refiled for $10 billion
Lawsuit dismissed for good
Federal Judge Darrin Gayles on Saturday dismissed US President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, its parent company Dow Jones and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The ruling was issued This was reported by BBC News and AFP.
The essence of the dispute
The lawsuit concerned a WSJ article from July 2025 about a letter that,according to the newspaper, Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 — long before Epstein was charged with sex crimes. As described by the WSJ, the letter contained several lines of typewritten text framed by a marker-drawn outline of a naked woman, a joking phrase about
The court's arguments
In a 20-page ruling, Gayles wrote that the lawsuit failed twice to prove (actual malice) — a high legal threshold requiring proof that the defendant knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Trump's lawyers argued that after Trump himself denied the letter, the newspaper should have
Context and background
This is already the second dismissal of the lawsuit: in April, Gayles dismissed its first version, which sought $20 billion, after which Trump's team refiled it for $10 billion. The WSJ publication came amid fierce bipartisan criticism in the summer of 2025 over the administration's handling of the Epstein case documents: Democrats and some Republicans rejected Trump's attempts to portray the story as a
Image source, Getty Images President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein posing for a photo together at Mar-a-Lago in 1997
Image source, Getty Images A man signs a 10-foot-tall protest art installation mocking Trump's alleged letter to Epstein at the National Mall in Washington, DC earlier this year
