A Federal Judge Threw Out Trump's $10 Billion Defamation Suit Against the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, and Dow Jones Over Their Story About a Lewd 2003 Birthday Letter to Jeffrey Epstein Bearing Trump's Name — This Time Dismissing It With Prejudice So It Cannot Be Refiled — and Wrote That the President Was "Grasping at Straws," Calling His Legal Team's Ghislaine Maxwell References a "Red Herring"

The First Amendment makes it hard for powerful people to win libel suits against the press, and deliberately so: the alternative is a country where officials can bleed critical outlets with litigation until the coverage stops. Trump tested that protection with a $10 billion suit against the Wall Street Journal. A federal judge not only rejected it — he ended it for good, and said the president was grasping at straws.

The ruling

On October 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami dismissed Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, and Dow Jones — and did so with prejudice, meaning Trump cannot refile it. The suit arose from the Journal's reporting on a lewd 2003 birthday letter, bearing Trump's name, prepared for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday — a letter Trump insists he did not write and has called "false, malicious, and defamatory."

Why Trump lost — and how pointedly

The legal core is the "actual malice" standard: a public figure suing for defamation must show the outlet published either knowing the material was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was. Gayles found Trump had failed to meet that bar. But the opinion went beyond a dry legal holding, and the language is part of the story:

• He wrote that the president was "grasping at straws"
• He suggested Trump's legal team had tried to manufacture flaws in the Journal's investigation
• He dismissed the complaint's invocations of Ghislaine Maxwell as a "red herring"
• He noted the Journal could move to recover its attorneys' fees

This was the second time Gayles tossed the case; he had dismissed an earlier version in the spring on the same actual-malice grounds but allowed Trump to refile, which Trump did in May. The with-prejudice dismissal this time is the court's way of saying the defect is not fixable. Trump says he will appeal and "continue to press forward."

Why a losing lawsuit is still a failure

One might ask why a dismissed suit belongs in a record of governmental failure rather than a win column for the press. The answer is in what the suit was for. A $10 billion demand is not a realistic estimate of damages; it is a number designed to frighten. When the President of the United States brings a ten-figure claim against a newspaper for reporting on his association with Jeffrey Epstein, the lawsuit itself is the point — a signal to every outlet that scrutinizing the president's Epstein ties invites ruinous litigation. This archive has documented the parallel campaign of bans, the White House Counsel's "retract or face consequences" threat to Politico, grand-jury subpoenas of reporters, and the plan to evict the press corps. The Journal suit is the civil-court front of the same war on the press. That it failed is a credit to the judge and the First Amendment, not to the president who brought it.

The fair caveats

In fairness, anyone — a president included — is entitled to sue over reporting he believes is false, and Trump genuinely disputes authorship of the Epstein letter; the court did not rule on whether he wrote it, only that the Journal's reporting was constitutionally protected. He is also entitled to appeal, and the appeal has not been decided. Those points are real. But the judge's own words foreclose a charitable reading of the suit: "grasping at straws" and "red herring" are not how courts describe meritorious claims brought in good faith. A president may sue; he may not weaponize a $10 billion claim to punish journalism, and when he tries, a court ending it with prejudice and a rebuke is the system functioning exactly as designed.

Why it belongs here

The health of a free press is measured partly by whether the powerful can punish it for true-or-protected reporting. Trump tried, with one of the largest defamation demands ever aimed at a news organization, over a story about Jeffrey Epstein that he would plainly prefer buried. He lost — twice, now permanently — and the judge made clear the loss was not close. The episode belongs in this archive both as another entry in the administration's sustained assault on the press and as a reminder of what holds that assault in check: courts willing to call a ten-billion-dollar intimidation suit what it is, and end it.