A Miami federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, ruling that the president's legal team had "not plausibly alleged" the newspaper published its report on a purported Jeffrey Epstein birthday letter with actual malice. U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, an Obama appointee, gave Trump leave to amend and refile, and Trump's team says that is exactly what it intends to do.
The ruling does not end the case. It sends it back to the drawing board. And Trump, who has waged an aggressive legal campaign against media outlets since the 2024 election cycle, is treating the decision as a procedural reset, not a defeat.
The lawsuit, filed in July 2025, named Dow Jones, the Journal's publisher, along with parent company News Corp, chief executive Robert Thomson, chair emeritus Rupert Murdoch, and two reporters as defendants. At issue was the Journal's reporting on a letter allegedly found in a birthday book from the estate of the late sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, which the paper said bore Trump's signature and included a hand-drawn naked woman alongside the message: "Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret." The letter was reportedly part of a 2003 album made for Epstein's 50th birthday.
Trump has flatly denied authoring or signing the letter. His lawsuit asserted that "no authentic letter or drawing exists" in which he used "salacious language." First Lady Melania Trump issued a public statement from the White House last week rebuking any suggestion she was connected to Epstein's crimes, declaring, "I am not Epstein's victim."
Judge Gayles grounded his dismissal in the well-established legal standard for public-figure defamation: actual malice. Under Supreme Court precedent, a public figure must show that a publisher either knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. That is a high bar, and the judge concluded Trump's complaint did not clear it.
In his ruling, Gayles wrote that the Journal's reporters appeared to follow normal journalistic practices. The Washington Times reported that the judge noted the paper sought comment from Trump, the Justice Department, and the FBI before publication, and included Trump's denial in the story itself.
Gayles put it bluntly in the order:
"President Trump's conclusory allegation that Defendants had contradictory evidence and failed to investigate is rebutted by the Article and is insufficient to establish actual malice."
He added: "President Trump's allegation that Defendants acted with ill-will is insufficient to plead actual malice." In short, the judge found that ill will alone, even if proven, does not satisfy the constitutional standard the law requires.
Notably, Gayles declined to make any factual determination about whether the material in the Journal's article was accurate. As Newsmax reported, the judge wrote that "whether President Trump was the author of the Letter or Epstein's friend are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the litigation." The truth or falsity of the underlying claims remains unresolved.
A spokesman for Trump's legal team made clear the president has no intention of walking away from the fight. The spokesman told reporters:
"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. The President will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People."
Trump himself weighed in on Truth Social. AP News reported that the president wrote: "This is not a termination" but rather a "suggested re-filing" of his "powerful case." His legal team has an April 27 deadline to file an amended complaint.
The president's broader litigation strategy against institutions he views as hostile is not limited to the Journal. Since the 2024 election cycle, Trump has reached $16 million in settlements with ABC News and CBS News over coverage complaints. A judge rejected his $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times in September. And he is currently suing the BBC for $10 billion over its coverage of his January 6, 2021, speech at the White House Ellipse; the BBC is attempting to get that suit dismissed.
The Journal's publisher was quick to claim vindication. A Dow Jones spokesperson said:
"We are pleased with the judge's decision to dismiss this complaint. We stand behind the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal's reporting."
Fox News reported the same quote, noting both Trump's legal team and Dow Jones framed the outcome in their own favor, one side calling it a reset, the other calling it a win.
The judge did refrain from awarding attorney fees and costs to the defendants, citing the possibility that Trump will amend and refile. That detail matters. It signals the court views the case as still live, not as a frivolous filing that warranted sanctions.
The letter at the center of the lawsuit surfaced through a broader political process. House Democrats publicly released the document last fall after the House Oversight Committee obtained it from a birthday book found in the Epstein estate. The document's release came amid intense public interest in Epstein's network, fueled by congressional action and federal disclosures.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act last November, which forced the Justice Department to release over 3 million pages of documents related to the Epstein investigation. The DOJ's handling of the Epstein files had drawn bipartisan scrutiny for years.
An FBI and Justice Department memo concluded there was no evidence Epstein had a "client list" and that his death on August 10, 2019, in a Manhattan jail cell was most likely suicide. That memo itself sparked a backlash among Trump supporters, who viewed it as an attempt to shut down further inquiry. The Journal's report on the birthday letter landed weeks after that memo, at a moment of heightened political tension around the Epstein disclosures.
Trump has long maintained he had a falling out with Epstein well before the financier's 2006 arrest on Florida child prostitution charges. He has said Epstein "stole people that worked for me" and that he eventually booted Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
The dismissal is a setback, but not necessarily a fatal one. Breitbart noted that Trump's legal team plans to refile by the April 27 deadline, and the judge's language left the door open for a stronger complaint. The question now is whether Trump's attorneys can marshal specific factual allegations, not just assertions of ill will, that meet the actual malice threshold.
Public-figure defamation cases are notoriously difficult to win. The actual malice standard, established in the landmark New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision, has shielded the press for decades. Trump's legal team will need to show more than bad faith or sloppy journalism. They will need to demonstrate that the Journal knew its reporting was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
Trump's record in court has been a mixed bag across various legal fronts. But his willingness to press defamation claims, and to extract settlements from ABC and CBS, has already changed the calculus for major newsrooms. Win or lose in Miami, the litigation itself carries weight.
News Corp, the parent company of both the Journal and The Post, remains a defendant. So do Murdoch and Thomson personally. The president's willingness to pursue legal battles on multiple fronts simultaneously, against the Times, the BBC, and now in a refiled Journal case, shows no sign of slowing.
Judge Gayles was careful to note that he made no finding on whether the Journal's reporting was true or false. He did not determine whether Trump wrote the letter. He did not rule on whether the document is authentic. He ruled only that Trump's complaint, as filed, did not meet the legal standard for defamation.
That distinction matters. The Journal can celebrate a procedural win, and Trump can treat the ruling as an invitation to come back stronger. Neither side got a verdict on the facts.
The real test comes next. If Trump's team files an amended complaint that clears the actual malice bar, this case moves into discovery, and discovery is where media defendants start losing sleep. If the amended complaint falls short again, the case dies for good.
For now, the lawsuit lives. And so does the question at its center: who wrote that letter, and whether the Journal cared enough to find out before it hit print.
