A federal judge in Florida handed Donald Trump a setback in court Monday, tossing his lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch over a Wall Street Journal article about the president’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
US District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that the paper’s story, published last year about a 2003 birthday letter Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein, was not defamatory.
In July, the Journal published a story about a book of letters to Epstein, who later pleaded guilty to sex offenses and died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on more severe sex-trafficking charges.
A letter bearing Trump’s name was included in the book compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday. The letter was “bawdy” and featured an outline of a nude woman, the Journal reported at the time.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in July, said the letter was not real. He sued Murdoch and a group of Journal reporters personally and asked for $10 billion in damages.
The House Oversight Committee released a copy of the birthday book, with some redactions, in October, after obtaining it from Epstein’s estate with a subpoena.
The copy included the letter with Trump’s name.
“A pal is a wonderful thing,” the letter read. “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
US District Judge Darrin Gayles, an Obama appointee, wrote in his Monday ruling that he did not consider the committee’s release of the full birthday book while evaluating whether to toss the lawsuit. The litigation had not yet reached the appropriate stage to evaluate the book’s fidelity, the judge said.
The judge ruled that, even without the full copy of the book backing up the Wall Street Journal’s reporter, Trump’s allegation failed to meet the legal standard for arguing that the Journal tried to defame him. The Journal reached out to The White House, the FBI, and the Justice Department for comment, and so it did not deliberately avoid investigating the veracity of the book, as Trump had alleged, the judge ruled.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said the president would refile the lawsuit.
“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 spokesperson said. “The President will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People.”
The lawsuit’s dismissal, for now, means that Murdoch — the chairman emeritus of News Corp., the parent company of Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal — can avoid being deposed in the case.
Trump previously attempted to accelerate the case’s timeline and force Murdoch to sit for a deposition. They later struck a deal where the 95-year-old media mogul could stave off questioning while the judge considered whether to dismiss the case.
A spokesperson for News Corp. didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
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