Trump's $10 Billion Wall Street Journal Lawsuit Dismissed With Prejudice: Judge Says the President Was 'Grasping at Straws'
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami threw out President Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch on Saturday — with prejudice, so it cannot be refiled — ruling the president did not show the Journal acted with actual malice in its reporting on a 2003 Jeffrey Epstein birthday letter.
A federal judge in Miami has ended President Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal — permanently, at the district-court level. U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the suit with prejudice on Saturday, October 31, ruling that the president did not plausibly show the Journal, its reporters or its owners published their reporting with actual malice, the standard the Supreme Court set for public figures in the 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, according to the Associated Press account published Sunday and Bloomberg's account of the ruling, both read this cycle. In his order, Gayles said the president was "grasping at straws" in arguing the Journal failed to properly investigate the story, and that the complaint attempted to manufacture flaws in the paper's investigative reporting, per the AP.
The suit concerned a Journal story from July 2025 reporting that a sexually suggestive letter and drawing bearing Trump's name appeared in a 2003 album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump denied writing the letter and sued the day the story reached print, naming reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo, publisher Dow Jones, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson, per the case accounts read this cycle. Saturday's order was the case's second dismissal: Gayles first threw the suit out in April for failing to plead actual malice, allowed an amended complaint in May, and has now closed the amended version in a 20-page order (Trump v. Dow Jones & Co., No. 1:25-cv-23232, S.D. Fla.). A dismissal with prejudice means the complaint cannot be fixed and refiled in that court.
The legal fight is not necessarily over. A spokesman for Trump's legal team signaled the president will appeal, per Bloomberg — the appeal would go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit — and Dow Jones said it was pleased with the decision, per the accounts read this cycle. The case is one of a series of multibillion-dollar defamation suits the president or his businesses have brought against news organizations since he returned to the White House, including complaints against the New York Times and the BBC, per Bloomberg's account.
