Judge permanently tosses Trump’s $10 billion suit over Epstein story
What’s new: The Miami ruling with prejudice bars Trump from refiling the case against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch.
A federal judge in Miami dismissed with prejudice President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over a report on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled Saturday that Trump failed to show the defendants acted with actual malice, the legal standard for defamation claims involving public figures. Gayles wrote that the suit was “grasping at straws” and tried to “manufacture” flaws in the Journal’s reporting. The case targeted a Journal story about a sexually suggestive letter and drawing the paper said bore Trump’s name in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein, assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump denied writing the letter and called the report false and defamatory.