President Trump speaks to reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on April 11 in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
WASHINGTON – A federal judge dismissed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against President Trump wall street journal And Rupert Murdoch discussed a story on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Giles in Florida wrote in the order that Trump failed to argue that the article was published with malicious intent, but he gave the president the opportunity to file an amended complaint.
Trump filed suit in July, promising to sue the newspaper almost immediately after it shed a new light on his well-documented relationship with Epstein by publishing an article that described a sexually suggestive letter, which the newspaper said was signed by Trump and included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The letter was later released publicly by Congress, which subpoenaed the records from Epstein’s estate. Trump denied writing it and called the story “false, malicious and defamatory.”
The newspaper and Murdoch’s lawyers had asked Giles to determine whether the statements in the article were true and therefore not defamatory, but the judge wrote that “Whether President Trump was the author of the letter or a friend of Epstein are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the litigation,” Giles wrote.
The decision deals another blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to manage the fallout from the release of the Epstein files and the president’s efforts to use the legal system to silence reporting critical of him.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Dow Jones, which publishes magazinesaid the organization was “pleased” with the judge’s decision, adding, “We stand behind reliability, rigor and accuracy Wall Street Journal’Is reporting.”
